THE  OPEN  SECRET 

A  STUDY  OF 
LIFE'S  DEEPER  FORCES 


BY 
JAMES  THOMPSON  BIXBY,  Ph.D. 

Author  of '"The  New  World  and  the  New  Thought^'" 

*'  The  Ethics  of  Evolution,^*  '*  Religion  and 

Science  as  Allies ^'^  etc.,  etc. 


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f  VERITAIIS 

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BOSTON 
AMERICAN  UNITARIAN  ASSOCIATION 

1912 


Copyright,  1912 
AMERICAN  UNITARIAN  ASSOCIATION 


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CONTENTS 


CHAPTER 

I  Vitality  and  Mechanism  . 

II  The   Cosmic   Motor   Power 

III  Atom  and   Spirit    . 

IV  Purpose   in   Nature     . 
V  Law     and     Providence 

VI  Good    the    Final    Goal 

VII  Fate   or    Choice    . 

VIII  Our    Self-Made   World 

IX  Partners  in  World-Making 

X  Search  the  Deep  Things  . 


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CHAPTER  I 
VITALITY  AND  MECHANISM 

One  of  the  notable  things  in  that  notable 
book  of  the  Old  Testament  containing  the 
prophecies  of  Ezekiel  is  the  curious  vision  with 
which   the   book   opens. 

A  labyrinth  of  wheels  and  monstrous  crea- 
tures— the  despair  of  commentators — is  de- 
scribed, where  within  the  beryl-tinted  wheels 
are  still  other  wheels,  and  again  within  each 
wheel  there  is  enclosed  the  spirit  of  some  liv- 
ing creature.  Whenever  any  draughtsman 
has  sought  to  make  a  representation  of  these 
winged  cherubim,  with  their  bovine  feet  and 
symbolic  faces  of  beast  and  man,  appearing 
like  burning  coals,  or  has  tried  to  sketch  pic- 
tures of  these  enclosing  wheels  that  were  each 
enclosed  by  other  wheels  and  in  their  swift  mo- 
tion followed  the  guidance  of  the  living  spirits 
within — whenever,  I  say,  any  artist  has  tried 
to  depict  this  vision  he  has  found  it  impos- 
sible to  imagine  it  without  becoming  involved 
in   inextricable   confusion. 

Nevertheless,  the  general  idea  symbolized  by 
this  vision  is  one  which  is  not  merely  quite  ra- 
tional, but  is  an  idea  most  significant  and  in- 


2  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

structlve.  For  the  essential  lesson  of  the  vision 
is  that  every  living  creature  has  around  him 
some  revolving  machinery,  and  that  within  all 
the  mechanical  wheel-works  which  are  visible 
there  is  a  living  soul  as  the  motor  power  and 
directing  agency  of  the  enclosing  enginery. 

Think  for  a  moment  of  that  phrase:  "The 
spirit  of  the  living  creature  in  the  wheels." 
Is  it  not  a  wonderfully  terse  and  pregnant 
summing  up  of  the  infinitely  vast  and  varied 
phenomena  of  the  universe.?  What  wheels 
within  wheels  characterize  the  Cosmos? 
Whirling  suns  and  planets,  satellites  re- 
volving punctually  in  their  orbits,  earth- 
circling  tides,  the  constant  circuit  of  va- 
pors from  sea  and  lake  to  cloud  and  back 
again  by  rain  drop  and  streamlet  to  mother 
ocean,  and  that  Protean  circle  of  transforma- 
tions by  which  the  solar  energy  changes  from 
light  to  heat,  and  heat  to  chemic  or  electric 
attraction  and  returns  again  without  loss  of 
original  force — what  wheels  within  wheels  con- 
stitute the  complexity  of  Nature ! 

A  great  German  scientist,  seeking  a  title 
for  his  work  on  the  mysterious  phenomena  of 
vitality,  could  find  none  so  satisfactory  to  him 
as  "The  Circulation  of  Life."  The  very  con- 
dition of  vitality  seems  to  be  this  constant  ro- 
tary motion.  In  man,  the  blood  under  the  un- 
wearied beat  of  the  heart  must  course  out  to 


VITALITY  AND  MECHANISM        3 

the  capillaries  and  brain  cells  with  its  fresh 
supplies  of  nutriment  and  energy  and  must 
then  flow  back  again  to  the  lungs  to  become 
purified  and  recharged  with  oxygen.  The 
nerve  currents  must  flow  with  their  sense  im- 
pressions from  the  surface  up  the  sensory 
nerves  to  the  brain  and  back  again  in  appro- 
priate motor  responses  to  the  muscles.  In 
lung,  heart,  ganglion,  blood  corpuscle,  cell 
and  molecule,  there  is  a  constant  round.  There 
is  continual  efflux  and  influx,  consumption  and 
replenishment.  It  is  only  by  this  ceaseless  dy- 
ing and  as  ceaseless  rebirth,  that  animate  be- 
ings keep  alive. 

And  to  maintain  this  circulation  of  life,  what 
curious  and  complicated  machinery  in  every 
part  of  the  body — the  valves  of  the  heart,  the 
batteries  of  the  brain,  the  triangular  muscle 
of  the  chin,  the  levers  of  arm  and  leg,  with 
their  beautiful  ball  and  socket  joints,  the  key- 
board of  the  ear  with  its  three  thousand  strings, 
and  the  hundred  other  equally  ingenious  con- 
trivances that  make  up  this  moving  house  of 
flesh,  most  of  them  working  so  automatically 
and  perfectly  that  it  is  only  on  the  occasions 
that  they  get  out  of  order  that  man  takes  any 
thought  of  the  complicated  mechanisms  and 
delicate  adjustments  by  which  he  walks  and 
talks  and  breathes. 

In  former  days  life  and  mind  were  fancied 


4  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

to  be  powers  only  loosely  connected  with  the 
grosser  flesh  into  which  they  were  injected. 
But  the  investigations  of  modern  physiologists 
have  shown  the  connection  of  the  vital  and 
mental  with  their  material  organs  to  be  of  the 
closest  kind.  Only  through  the  fuel  of  food 
can  the  flame  of  hfe  be  kept  alive,  and  every 
vital  spark  costs  its  inexorable  "quid  pro-quo" 
in  disintegrated  tissue.  When  we  would  get 
extra  muscular  exertion  from  a  laborer  we  must 
give  him  an  extra  amount  of  nutritive  sub- 
stance to  convert  into  force.  The  grass-feed- 
ing ox,  from  the  nature  of  the  case,  cannot 
compete  in  speed  or  strength  with  the  flesh- 
feeding  tiger. 

Even  the  mind  is  dependent  on  its  wheels, 
its  nervous  mechanism.  Slice  ofl^,  layer  by 
layer,  a  pigeon's  brains  and  in  the  same  meas- 
ure you  pare  oiF  its  power  of  feeling  and  of 
thought.  Each  of  our  senses, — sight,  hearing, 
smell,  language — has  its  respective  brain-cen- 
ter. Cut  out  this  cerebral  seat  and  the  cor- 
responding faculty  disappears. 

What  unwelcome  thoughts  at  times  obtrude 
themselves  upon  us;  what  strange  reproduc- 
tions of  habits  and  peculiarities  of  ancestors, 
and  what  mysterious  impulses,  foreign  to  our 
personal  taste  and  choice,  occasionally  take 
possession  of  us.  When  we  are  in  an  idle  mood, 
how  thought  follows  thought,  and  how  one  men- 


VITALITY  AND  MECHANISM         5 

tal  picture  succeeds  another  along  the  well 
grooved  channels  of  association,  driven  by  some 
intellectual  enginery  that  seems  quite  alien  to 
our  own  personality.  Or  in  the  moral  world, 
what  a  bundle  of  habits  does  man  often  seem  to 
be — a  conglomeration  of  half  a  dozen  progeni- 
tors, a  mere  will-less  scale-yard,  going  up  or 
down,  just  according  to  the  preponderance  of 
interested  motives  put  into  the  mental  weigh- 
ing pans. 

All  these  mechanical  conditions  of  life  have 
to  be  admitted  by  the  candid  mind.  It  is  only 
in  the  minute  and  curious  detail  into  which  mod- 
ern research  has  pushed  its  probe  that  there  is 
anything  new  in  this  line  of  facts.  The  essen- 
tial truth  that  a  sound  mind  always  depends 
upon  a  sound  body  has  been  acknowledged  for 
centuries. 

But  equally  true  and  equally  to  be  acknowl- 
edged is  the  converse — that  for  the  body's 
soundness  and  activity  there  is  needed  a  healthy 
and  active  spirit ;  it  is  equally  evident  that 
flesh  needs  soul  as  much  as  soul  needs  flesh. 

The  materialist,  concentrating  his  attention 
solely  on  the  mechanical  side  of  life,  of  which 
I  have  been  speaking,  would  present  this  as  the 
sum  total  of  vital  existence.  Animals  and  men, 
the  lowest  star  fish  and  the  greatest  of  poets, 
(he  tells  us)  are  all  just  so  many  machines. 
The  food  supply  determines  the  egg  and  the  egg 


6  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

produces  the  bird  or  bee.  As  are  the  respect- 
ive environments,  sense-impressions  and  links 
of  association,  so  must  be  the  man's  ideas. 

"Without  phosphorous  no  thought,"  was  the 
favorite  adage  of  the  German  man  of  science, 
Moleschott.  According  to  Naturalistic  Mon- 
ism, every  act  is  predetermined  by  its  conditions 
before  it  arises.  Free  choice  is  a  myth,  and  an 
idea  not  generated  or  conditioned  by  the  pliys- 
ical  environment  is  a  chimera.  He  who  is 
most  confident  of  the  dominant  power  to  direct 
his  course  is  the  veriest  bit  of  driftwood  in  the 
eddies  of  inevitable  destiny. 

Such  are  the  superficial  dicta  of  the  material- 
ists. They  are  so  fascinated  by  the  shapes  and 
motions  of  the  wheels  surrounding  the  living 
beings  that  they  forget  to  ask,  "What  moves 
them?"  They  are  content  to  watch  only  the 
outside  changes  and  so  miss  the  deeper  and  es- 
sential qualities  of  humanity — the  vital  force, 
the  evolutive  type,  the  comparing  judgment 
and  the  choosing  Will.  Even  to  keep  the  body 
alive  and  in  good  order  for  its  three  score  years, 
there  must  be  more  than  mechanism.  For  its 
great  peculiarity  is  the  constant  repair  of  its 
daily  waste,  decay  and  minor  ills  and  injuries. 
If  it  is  an  engine,  then  it  is  one  that  contains 
within  an  automatic  registry  of  the  experience 
of  its  ancestors  for  centuries ;  and  as  Prof. 
J.     Arthur     Thomson     says :     "It     is     a     self 


VITALITY  AND  MECHANISM         7 

stoking,  self-repairing,  self-preservative,  self- 
adjusting,  self-increasing,  self- reproducing 
engine."  But  who  ever  knew  a  machine  to 
mend  its  own  breaks  and  replenish  its  own 
wastes?  It  is  by  this  super-mechanical  power, 
ever  superintending,  remaking  and  over-ruling 
the  ordinary  chemic  and  physical  tendencies 
that  would  disintegrate  its  parts,  that  every 
animate  organism  lives. 

And  it  is  the  same  spirit  of  life  within  the 
physical  machinery  that  is  the  real  agent  in 
our  mental  and  moral  life.  Powerful  as  are 
our  habits,  our  prejudices,  and  our  fleshly  in- 
stincts, yet  that  which  makes  a  man  a  man  is 
his  consciousness  that  he  can  over-rule  these. 
He  can  check  these  impulses  before  they  are  in- 
carnated in  actions ;  he  can  break  away  from 
old  and  undesirable  habits  and  initiate  a  new 
kind  of  moral  custom ;  and,  under  the  influence 
of  that  loftier  aspiration  for  an  ideal  best  that 
harries  progressive  humanity,  he  can  turn  away 
from  all  beaten  paths  to  climb  spiritual  heights 
never  before  attained  by  man. 

The  mind  has  a  power  independent  of  the 
forces,  whether  material  or  social,  pressing 
upon  it,  that  may  properly  be  called  "the  sov- 
ereignty of  the  self  in  willing."  Behind  all 
the  cerebral  machinery  there  hide,  as  the  main 
spring  that  moves  it,  those  noble  powers  by 
which  man  is  a  living  soul  and  a  child  of  God. 


8  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

It  Is  because  of  this  infinite  reservoir  of  strength 
on  which  he  can  always  draw  (and  only  because 
of  this)  that  the  will  of  the  virtuous  man  ex- 
hibits this  peculiar  mechanical  paradox,  viz: 
that  its  power  increases,  not  diminishes,  with 
the  resistance.  Physical  force  is  a  constant 
quantity.  But  the  moral  power  of  the  still 
small  voice  draws  aid  from  an  inexhaustible 
source  to  supply  whatever  energy  it  needs  to 
overcome  the  tide  of  temptation. 

The  limited  outer  view  of  things  that  leads 
so  many  to  a  materialistic  solution  of  the  great 
"World  Riddle"  is  as  superficial  as  it  is  de- 
pressing. 

They  who  delve  too  persistently  in  the  base- 
ment excavations  of  the  Cosmic  Temple  often 
fail  to  see  the  heaven-reaching  pinnacles  for 
whose  support  these  deep  foundations  were  laid, 
even  when  the  sunlight  of  knowledge  gilds  them 
with  its  brightest  illumination.  But  they  who 
look  at  the  evolving  universe  with  the  search- 
ing vision  of  spiritual  insight  see  in  every 
marvel  of  natural  beauty  and  in  every  high 
experience  of  the  soul  the  fragrant  blossom  of 
a  Divine  life  and  love,  unfolding  petal  by  petal. 
Just  as  surely  as  all  the  loveliness  and  perfume 
that  emerge  from  the  hyacinth  when  it  comes 
to  full  bloom  were  infolded  at  the  start  in  the 
homely  bulb,  so  do  all  the  spiritual  forces  and 
consciousness,  which  have  been  evolved  in  the 


VITALITY  AND  MECHANISM         9 

highest  reaches  of  humanity,  speak  of  the  Di- 
vine Power  and  Reason  at  the  heart  of  the  uni- 
verse. The  wing  of  the  bird  implies  the  air  to 
which  it  is  adjusted.  The  eye  of  the  animal 
implies  the  corresponding  light.  Each  organ 
answers  to  an  environing  element  which  stimu- 
lated it  into  existence.  So  the  spirit's  eye  im- 
plies the  spiritual  light  and  the  immaterial  ob- 
ject. Our  human  reason  implies  the  Universal 
Reason  and  as  we  listen  to  the  music  of  hu- 
man duty  and  noble  self-sacrifice  we  hear  the 
heart-beat  of  an  Infinite  Love. 

To  ride,  as  man  does,  at  the  head  of  the 
procession  of  creation,  in  his  triumphal  car, 
piled  high  with  all  the  prizes  and  dainties  of 
earth,  seems  a  sufficiently  proud  position ;  but 
man  is  so  constituted  that  it  is  not  enough  for 
the  satisfaction  of  his  heart.  The  human  con- 
sciousness needs  to  find  and  recognize  its  rela- 
tion to  the  infinite  and  heavenly.  The  magni- 
tudes of  matter  may  suggest  the  limitless  ex- 
pansion of  the  Divine,  but  it  is  only  through 
the  pure  soul  that  we  enter  into  its  secret.  If 
George  Eliot  (as  one  who  well  knew  the  human 
heart  has  said)  had  ever  pressed  a  lifeless  babe 
to  her  bereaved  bosom,  she  would  never  have 
been  content  with  the  vague  impersonal  sur- 
vival of  her  Choir  Invisible. 

You  may  call  the  beatitudes  of  the  Galilean 
Mount  mere  misty  paradoxes,  and  those  yearn- 


10  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

ings,  that  distinguish  man  from  the  beasts  of 
the  field,  prismatic  bubbles  that  dissolve  at 
the  pin-prick  of  common  sense;  but  it  is  these 
that  illumine  life  with  light  which  no  earthly 
darkness  can  dull  nor  care  overshadow  nor  the 
night  of  death  extinguish. 

Thus  in  our  personal  life  and  conduct  we 
should  ever  see  within  the  wheels  the  living 
spirit.  And,  secondly,  in  our  view  of  the  uni- 
verse, in  our  philosophical  and  religious  inter- 
pretations, a  similar  conjunction  of  the  me- 
chanical and  the  vital  should  be  recognized. 

The  science  and  theology  of  former  days 
acknowledged  only  the  spiritual.  The  super- 
natural was  everywhere  in  the  foreground;  the 
natural  in  the  background. 

To  the  chanters  of  the  Vedas  every  flicker- 
ing flame  was  a  living  creature,  an  appearance 
of  Agni,  the  fire  god ;  the  Greeks  beheld  in  every 
rustling  tree  a  Dryad,  in  every  babbling  foun- 
tain a  water  nymph.  The  prevalent  faith  of 
all  the  early  nations,  as  of  savages  to-day,  was 
similar.  Sun  and  moon,  cloud,  storm,  evening 
breeze,  each  had  its  impelling  divinity.  Each 
spirit  followed  his  own  caprice  on  the  impulse 
of  the  moment.  Nowhere  was  there  any 
fixed  order.  With  the  ascent  of  thought  to 
the  higher  faith  of  Monotheism,  the  only 
change,  for  a  long  time,  was  that  every  ca- 
tastrophe or  trouble  was  interpreted  as  a  retri- 


VITALITY  AND  MECHANISM       11 

bution  sent  from  the  Supreme  God  upon  the 
sufferer  for  some  known  or  secret  sin.  Life 
was  a  succession  of  special  providences,  and 
the  career  of  every  prophet  or  saint  a  series  of 
signs  and  wonders,  manifesting  the  direct  in- 
tervention of  the  Most  High. 

Our  modern  thought,  however,  has  gone  to 
the  very  opposite  extreme.  No  wind  bloweth 
where  it  listeth;  the  wildest  gust  has  its  ap- 
pointed course,  from  which  it  cannot  swerve. 

By  uniform  laws,  every  continent  has 
been  moulded  and  uplifted.  By  simple  proc- 
esses of  variation,  struggle  for  existence  and 
accumulation  of  hereditary  gains,  the  rudi- 
mentary creatures  have  developed  into  complex 
and  elaborate  organisms ;  the  tree  of  life  has 
sent  forth  a  thousand  different  stocks  and  the 
most  curious  and  varied  forms  appear  on  its 
genealogical  stem.  In  all  these  diverse  species, 
in  all  their  ingenious  organs  and  vital  adjust- 
ments, in  the  rise,  growth  and  decay  of  nations, 
and  in  the  most  astonishing  coincidences  of 
personal  or  social  events,  modern  science  sees 
only  the  products  of  that  great  machine-shop 
of  interacting,  unresting  wheels  of  law  and 
force  that  we  call  Nature. 

Now,  the  natural  result  of  this  extension  of 
the  network  of  law  and  its  mechanical  processes 
over  the  whole  universe  is  at  first  most  chilling 
to    faith.     When    the    believer    who    has    been 


12  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

brought  up  in  the  common  conception  of  the 
Deity  as  a  vague  presence  immensely  greater 
than  man,  but  with  the  personal  loves  and  dis- 
likes, moods  of  wrath,  pity,  imperfect  counsels, 
changeable  purposes  and  incomplete  forethought 
which  are  characteristic  of  humanity, — when 
such  a  believer,  I  say,  comes  by  scientific  investi- 
gation to  abandon  these  ideas,  what  a  loss  he 
feels !  In  what  a  freezing  waste  and  friendless 
world  he  seems  to  find  himself.  Having  always 
thought  of  God  as  the  great  intervener  and  re- 
pairer of  the  cosmic  system,  manifest  in  every 
mystery  or  eccentricity  of  the  processes  of  Na- 
ture, this  reduction  of  the  perturbations  and 
irregularities  of  the  world  to  mechanical  laws 
seems  to  banish  God  from  the  universe. 

This  is  the  ground  of  that  grave  prejudice 
which  so  large  a  part  of  the  religious  world  has 
against  the  doctrine  of  evolution.  Since  the 
great  champions  of  this  pregnant  law  have 
shown  how  every  complex  and  higher  phenom- 
enon of  the  world  has  had  its  origin  in  some 
simpler  and  lower  form  or  force,  and  by  their 
astronomic,  geologic  and  biological  researches 
have  expanded  the  sway  of  this  principle  till  it 
is  made  to  include  the  farthest  nebulag  and  the 
utmost  rim  of  telescopic  ken,  God  has  seemed 
to  be  pushed  outside  the  verge  of  his  own  uni- 
verse and  made  henceforth  a  superfluous  hy^ 
pothesis. 


VITALITY  AND  MECHANISM       13 

Now,  candid  Christian  thought  must  admit 
the  mediation  of  these  mechanisms  and  wheels 
— the  wheel  of  evolution,  the  wheel  of  heredity, 
of  struggle  for  existence,  of  physical  conditions 
and  environment,  of  unbroken  order. 

But  scientific  thought,  if  that  also  is  candid, 
must  recognize  the  living  spirit  within  the 
wheels  as  even  more  essential.  As  the  great 
German  philosopher,  Lotze,  has  said:  "The 
true  source  of  the  life  of  science  lies  in  showing 
how  absolutely  universal,  in  the  structure  of 
the  world,  is  the  mission  of  mechanism,  yet  how 
completely  subordinate  is  its  significance?" 

A  profounder  analysis  of  these  modern  theo- 
ries and  the  methods  which  they  suppose  points 
us  back  to  that  very  supersensuous  realm  that 
they  are  thought  to  make  unnecessary.  There 
can  be  no  evolution  without  a  preceding  involu- 
tion from  a  power  mighty  and  wise  enough  to 
produce  the  marvels  that  later  appear. 

The  materialist  who  explains  life  and  thought 
and  all  the  other  thousand  wonders  of  the  world 
as  but  re-arrangements  of  an  original  stock  of 
energy  and  motion  in  the  primal  nebula  only 
accounts  for  the  continuance  of  the  world's  ac- 
tivities in  some  shape  or  other.  This  account 
does  not  explain  the  wise  and  orderly  direction 
and  harmony  of  these  activities.  To  account 
for  that  we  must  have  a  sufficient  wisdom  and 
beneficence  in  the  First  Cause.     The  material- 


14  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

istic  theory  does  not  account  even  for  the  un- 
decayed  and  freshly  renewed  action  and  ener- 
gies of  our  universe.  For  on  pure  mechanical 
principles  it  ought  to  be  constantly  losing  its 
working  energy,  and  it  is  necessary,  as  Profes- 
sors Tait  and  Stewart  have  shown,  to  suppose 
an  "Unseen  Universe"  surrounding  us,  which 
may  feed  the  visible  universe  and  maintain  its 
customary  activities.  That  which  makes  evolu- 
tion a  process  of  real  progress,  not  a  mere 
swinging  round  the  circle,  is  the  progressive 
saturation  of  matter  by  spirit  which  it  exhibits. 
More  and  more  every  day,  as  especially  the 
great  discovery  of  the  Roentgen  rays  illus- 
trates, science  is  acknowledging  the  existence 
around  us  of  forces  and  substances  which  pass 
through  every  pore  of  our  bodies,  and  yet  are 
far  too  subtle  to  be  weighed  in  any  balance  or 
to  be  seen  by  any  microscope. 

In  the  processes  of  evolution  it  is  these  in- 
fluences from  a  higher  plane  that  especially  ac- 
celerate the  development  of  life.  How  slow 
was  the  upward  climb  of  the  vegetable  kingdom 
while  its  progress  was  carried  forward  chiefly 
by  the  influence  of  the  environment,  fortuitous 
variation  and  natural  selection.  How  bare  of 
beauty  was  it  and  how  meager  in  form  and 
variety!  But  when  the  higher  forces  of  ani- 
mal desire  and  visual  pleasure  and  esthetic 
taste   came   to   act  upon   it,   as   bee  and  moth 


VITALITY  AND  MECHANISM       15 

and  butterfly  became  intermediaries  in  the 
work  of  vegetable  union  and  reproduction,  what 
an  amazing  diversity  of  form  and  glory  of 
adornment,  and  what  rapid  ascent  in  com- 
plex organization  took  place!  In  the  animal 
kingdom,  for  example,  it  was  only  after  the 
mental  forces  of  desire  and  effort,  use,  disuse 
and  habit  came  into  play  that  the  chief  prog- 
ress in  complex  organization  was  made.  It 
was  these  mental  factors,  as  Prof.  Cope  and  the 
naturalists  of  the  Neo-Lamarckian  school  have 
shown,  to  which  is  due  the  building  up  of  the 
chief  organs  of  the  body,  especially  the  feet, 
hands,  teeth,  jaws,  eyes  and  brain.  So  in  hu- 
man civilization,  it  is  the  uplift  of  a  few  superior 
minds,  in  raising  and  inspiring  the  common 
herd  that  has  chiefly  carried  humanity  forward. 
Similarly,  I  believe,  these  highest  human  minds 
— the  great  geniuses,  the  prophets  and  re- 
formers and,  indeed,  all  who  have  candidly 
opened  the  windows  of  the  soul  to  the  light  of 
truth  and  right, — have  in  their  turn  been  illumi- 
nated by  the  influx  and  inspirations  of  the  great 
unseen  world  of  spirit  in  which  we  are  im- 
mersed and  have  been  drawn  up  and  strength- 
ened by  our  contact  with  it. 

If  the  soul  of  animal  and  man  has  done  so 
much  in  evolution,  how  much  more  ought  we  to 
credit  to  the  Over-soul? 

When  the  air  plant,  hung  up  in  a  room,  gains 


16  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

weight  and  substance,  we  know  there  must  be 
in  the  air  itself  a  source  of  nutrient  supply. 
So  when  the  minds  of  men  grow  and  burgeon 
without  visible  feeding,  we  know  it  is  by  draw- 
ing in  and  assimilating  the  invisible  spiritual 
nutriment.  It  is  this  continuous  communion 
of  the  finite  with  the  infinite  that  we  call  revela- 
tion. Conceived  as  some  irregular  and  miracu- 
lous injection  of  infallible  truth  which  the  mind 
of  a  prophet  or  saint  passively  receives  and 
records  without  the  slightest  shade  of  human 
errancy  or  imperfection,  revelation  is  a  difficult 
thing  to  credit.  But  conceived  as  a  constant 
and  orderly  inflow  and  pressure  of  the  ever 
active  Divine  energy  and  light  on  the  finite 
mind,  giving  sensitiveness  to  the  conscience, 
illumination  to  the  intellect  and  fortitude  to 
the  righteous  will  (but  conditioned  and  tinged, 
nevertheless,  in  each  individual  according  to 
his  personal  capacity  and  teachableness),  it  is 
entirely  reasonable. 

In  the  new  scientific  theory  of  mind,  mental 
power  is  not  one  energy  out  of  several,  but  an 
aspect  which  all  the  energies  of  Nature  assume 
when  they  pass  through  the  brain  and  are 
viewed  from  within.  This  direct  view,  then,  be- 
hind the  scenes  of  Nature,  which  consciousness 
gives  us,  shows  the  mental  qualities,  the  spirit- 
ual side  which  all  forces  of  Nature  possess 
when  really  known.     Through  these  inward  ex- 


VITALITY  AND  MECHANISM       17 

periences  of  the  physical  forces  we  legitimately 
reinterpret  all  and  ascribe  to  them  a  spiritual 
nature.  In  that  httle  circle  of  physical  proc- 
esses through  which  we  can  look  (viz,  the  mo- 
tions of  our  own  brains  and  nerves),  we  find 
feeling,  will  and  thought  behind  them.  Hence 
we  feel  justified  in  saying  that  feeling,  will  and 
thought  will  be  found  behind  all  the  physical 
processes  of  the  world  as  their  cause  and  es- 
sence. It  is  not  because  of  certain  breaks  in 
the  chain  of  causality,  certain  gaps  in  the  line 
of  the  development  of  the  animal  world,  or  cer- 
tain missing  links  between  the  brute  and  man 
that  materialism  is  unsatisfactory  and  that 
physical  nature  demands  a  God  to  supplement 
its  insufficiencies.  It  is  for  far  profounder  rea- 
sons :  it  is  because  all  order  implies  reason ;  all 
change  implies  force ;  all  force  implies  will. 
The  great  tree  of  Life  should  ever  be  thought 
of  as  an  endogenous  organism,  growing  not 
from  without  inward,  but  from  within  outward. 
Nevertheless,  the  converse  truth  should  not 
be  overlooked,  that  for  successful  growth  there 
should  be  suitable  physical  conditions  and  ma- 
terialization in  appropriate  embodiments. 
Spirit  to  pull  eff'ectively  must  pull  in  the  steady 
traces  of  law.  The  ardent  temperament  chafes 
at  being  obliged  to  use  this  rigid  machinery 
and  groans  at  being  tied  up  by  these  material 
straps    and   external   bonds.     He   thinks   that 


18  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

there  ought  to  be  some  quicker  way  to  cure  the 
tuberculosis  patient  than  by  fresh  air,  and  some 
easier  method  of  restoring  the  neurotic  than  by 
food  and  quiet  and  Nature's  healing  processes. 

The  theologian  is  apt  to  believe  that  God  has 
given  to  the  world  some  more  immediate  rev- 
elation of  divine  truth  than  what  he  has  im- 
parted through  the  growing  spiritual  percep- 
tion and  clearer  moral  insight  which  has  come 
naturally  to  our  human  race.  I  once  heard  a 
man  of  education  say  that  he  believed  that  inas- 
much as  in  his  youth  he  had  given  his  heart  to 
the  Lord  and  been  converted  according  to  the 
received  church  customs,  he  had  a  right  to  ex- 
pect to  receive  from  God  a  superior  measure  of 
health  and  personal  power  and  influence;  and 
he  was  sorely  disappointed  that  he  had  not  re- 
ceived this  special  largess.  Like  so  many 
others,  this  man  had  forgotten  that  God's  uni- 
verse has  its  distinct  realms  and  planes  and 
conditions,  and  that  whoever  wants  a  particu- 
lar crop  must  plant  and  cultivate  its  appropri- 
ate seed.  Whether  we  like  it  or  not,  we  must 
recognize  the  universality  of  God's  laws  and  the 
unchangeableness  of  his  methods,  and  that  it 
is  in  vain  to  expect  him  to  alter  his  eternal 
plans  to  suit  our  petty  convenience.  There  is 
no  magic,  no  witchcraft  in  the  divine  dispensa- 
tion. 

But  though  these  wheels  move  straight  for- 


VITALITY  AND  MECHANISM       19 

ward,  swerving  not  to  prayer  nor  to  curse,  nor 
to  the  most  passionate  outcry  of  the  saintliest 
soul,  it  is  well  to  remember  that  the  wheels  are 
full  of  eyes.  The  Omniscience  of  the  Infinite 
One,  by  its  wise  provisions,  by  its  skillful,  auto- 
matic self-adjustments  and  by  the  transform- 
ing power  of  the  soul's  chemistry,  provides  for 
the  good  of  all  his  creatures.  Love  everywhere 
hides  within  these  laws.  Its  pains  are  but  dan- 
ger signals;  its  penalties  are  correctives. 
This  changeless  providence,  hurting  us  only 
when  we  transgress  the  divine  laws,  works  ever 
for  greater  good.  This  rigid  uniformity  and 
intermediate  machinery  which  we  are  obliged 
to  master  is  the  means  of  our  education  and 
spiritual  development. 

In  our  personal  life  and  in  our  interpreta- 
tion of  Nature  the  secret  of  peace,  power  and 
knowledge  lies  in  recognizing  these  two  comple- 
mentary facts — the  outer  mechanism  and  the 
inner  life. 

And  if  we  are  wise  we  shall  also  bear  them  in 
mind  in  our  associated  efforts.  In  social  life 
nothing  can  be  achieved  without  the  wheels  of 
organization.  He  who  carries  his  individualism 
so  far  as  to  refuse  to  sacrifice  the  least  particle 
of  his  personal  liberty  in  the  partnership  of  any 
association  never  accomplishes  anything.  It  is 
only  through  government  and  a  settled  order 
that    even    freedom    is    to    be    obtained.     The 


20  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

shouter  for  anarchy  is  the  most  transparent 
"stalking-horse"  of  violence  and  tyranny  that 
there  is  on  the  road ;  for  those  who  plunder  the 
public  always  know  the  strength  that  lies  in  a 
clever  combine.  Every  political  movement  that 
accomplishes  anything  in  a  State  must  either 
organize  a  party  of  its  own  or  take  possession 
of  some  political  machinery  already  in  exist- 
ence. 

Each  new  religion,  doubtless,  had  its  first 
beginning  in  the  solitary  breast  of  some  aspir- 
ing soul  who  goes  up  into  the  mountain  apart 
to  pray.  But  unless  that  heavenly  spark  is  to 
perish  uselessly,  it  must  kindle  a  kindred  fire 
in  sympathetic  souls.  The  new  spiritual  life 
must  incarnate  itself  in  an  ecclesiastical  body. 
Its  faith  must  formulate  itself  in  creeds,  sing 
itself  in  psalms,  objectify  itself  in  rituals,  or- 
ganize institutions,  schools,  missions,  executive 
machines  of  ail  kinds.  Otherwise,  it  will  fade 
away. 

But,  now,  on  the  other  hand,  the  State  or 
the  church  that  would  not  perish  with  dry  rot 
must  not  become  a  mere  set  of  wheels.  That 
is  the  unfortunate  tendency  of  all  organiza- 
tions. Corporations,  as  the  lawyers  say,  have 
no  souls.  The  board,  whether  civic,  philan- 
thropic or  religious,  is  too  apt  to  be  correctly 
named  "a  hoard,'' — wooden,  hard  and  narrow. 
The  party  machine,  instead  of  being  worked  to 


VITALITY  AND  MECHANISM       21 

spread  principles  and  effect  reforms,  is  used  to 
keep  its  members  in  office.  So,  likewise,  many 
a  church  becomes  a  similar  machine,  concerned 
not  about  the  promotion  of  spiritual  life  or 
the  attainment  of  truth,  but  only  about  the 
maintenance  of  the  creed  and  the  ritual  and  the 
securing  of  good  places  for  the  Pharisees  who 
with  the  least  wincing  can  repeat  the  old  shib- 
boleths. Societies  formed  for  the  very  purpose 
of  promoting  the  knowledge  of  the  Scripture, 
through  a  blind  conservatism  and  an  overbear- 
ing financial  interest,  become  the  chief  obsta- 
cles to  its  candid  study  and  enlightened  under- 
standing. Recall  how  our  great  Bible  society 
in  this  country  still  continues  to  reprint  the  old 
version,  so  manifestly  full  of  errors,  and  blocks 
the  way  to  a  circulation  of  the  more  correct 
Revised  Version.  It  Is  only  one  of  the  many 
ways  by  which,  instead  of  Christianity,  we  have 
to-day  a  miserable  "churchianlty,"  whose  motto, 
as  Dr.  Edward  Everett  Hale  once  said,  is  "The 
intentional  reversal  of  the  great  apostle's 
motto ;  and  despising  the  things  that  are  before, 
they  worship  the  idols  that  are  behind." 

It  is  for  this  reason  that  when  on  the  heels 
of  the  impractical  prophet  there  comes  the 
shrewd  priest  and  his  ecclesiastical  machinery, 
next  there  must  come  the  reformer  to  break  the 
machine  in  pieces,  that  the  living  being  within 
may  not  be  done  to  death  amid  the  multitude  of 


22  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

whirling  rods  and  the  meshes  of  red  tape. 
"Dead  mechanism  will  never  supply  the  place 
of  living  enthusiasm." 

For  genuine  religion  we  need  something  more 
than  church  ceremonies  and  institutions,  lit- 
anies and  cathedrals.  There  must  be  the  un- 
calculating  surrender  of  the  spirit,  the  intimate 
contact  of  the  human  soul  with  the  Over-soul. 

To  make  the  wheels  of  state  and  church  move 
aright  we  must  have  a  man  within  each.  Let 
us  not  be  too  anxious  about  these  mechanical 
instruments.  If  there  is  no  vital  spirit  within 
to  guide  them,  the  sooner  they  rust  out  the  bet- 
ter. If  there  be  a  vital  spirit  inside,  it  can 
build  a  new  set  of  organs  for  itself  when  it 
chooses.  It  is  not  the  body  that  constructs 
the  soul.  It  is  the  soul  that  constructs  the 
body.  Let  our  chief  concern  be  to  have  the 
faith  and  vital  energy  which  possess  the  build- 
ing faculty.  The  needful  thing  is  to  discern 
so  clearly  the  Divine  Spirit  behind  all  the  revo- 
lutions of  history  and  the  mechanisms  of  nature 
that  the  wheels  of  our  daily  life  shall  not  drag 
in  sloth  or  gloom,  but  move  cheerfully  and 
actively  in  the  heavenly  path.  This  life  of 
God  is  ever  near  us.  Behind  all  the  appar- 
ently relentless  machinery  the  heart's  insight 
recognizes  the  tenderness  of  the  Father's  all- 
embracing  forethought.  The  insight  that  dis- 
cerns it  is  an  insight  not  simply  characteristic 


VITALITY  AND  MECHANISM       S3 

of  a  warm  heart,  but  one  normally  possessed  by 
the  clear  mind,  and  for  the  human  will  it  is  the 
essential  condition  of  vigorous,  hopeful  and 
progressive  action. 


CHAPTER  II 
THE  COSMIC  MOTOR  POWER 

The  spectacle  of  the  universe  is  its  ceaseless 
display  of  movement.  Nowhere,  if  we  examine 
closely,  can  we  find  anything  really  at  rest. 
The  fixed  stars,  as  we  call  them,  are  steaming  on 
their  way  swifter  than  express  trains,  and  the 
rigid,  inert  stone  is  really  but  a  throng  of  ever- 
dancing  atoms.  Or  if  we  look  into  the  past, 
we  find  that  the  world  has  come  to  its  present 
condition  through  a  countless  series  of  changes 
and  transformations,  no  stage  of  which  has 
been  more  than  momentary,  or  has  ever  exactly 
repeated  itself.  We  are  led  irresistibly  to  ask, 
"What  is  the  motor  power  that  has  carried 
the  world  forward  through  these  countless  and 
constant  changes?" 

To  answer  this  question  intelligently  we  must 
go  back  to  fundamental  problems.  We  must 
consider  the  conception  of  cause,  and  what  it 
necessarily  implies. 

Whenever  any  event  in  life  or  nature  is  re- 
flected upon,  the  mind  is  always  found  going 
behind  it,  inquiring  how  it  came  into  existence. 
By  an  intuitive  principle,  constitutional  to  the 

intellect,  reason  traces  back  in  the  direction  of 

^4 


THE  COSMIC  MOTOR  POYTOR       25 

that  event,  seeking  the  power  by  which  it  came 
to  pass.  And  until  such  a  cause  is  found,  rea- 
son remains  unsatisfied. 

This  is  the  principle  of  our  practical  life  and 
daily  activity.  In  science  it  is  still  more  fre- 
quently and  necessarily  manifested.  Auguste 
Comte,  to  be  sure,  laid  it  down  as  a  maxim  that 
science  should  study  only  the  laws  of  phenom- 
ena, their  coexistences  and  sequences,  and  ab- 
stain from  asking  after  the  origin  and  causes 
of  things.  As  for  the  duty  of  science,  I  may 
quote  the  opposite  and  equally  weighty  author- 
ity of  Helmholtz,  who  declares  that  conformity 
to  law  in  nature  must  be  conceived  as  a  causal 
connection,  and  that  if  we  pursue  to  genuine 
fulfillment  the  desire  to  know  the  laws  of  things 
"we  have  to  seek  out  the  forces  which  are  the 
causes  of  phenomena." 

And  not  only  is  the  cause  the  great  object 
of  the  inquiries  of  men  of  science,  but  there  is 
none  of  them  who  considers  the  search  ended 
with  the  first  induction  of  a  cause.  Beyond  the 
proximate  cause,  it  is  seen,  there  must  be  a 
more  remote  cause,"  and  when  this  has  been 
reached  the  inquiry  renews  itself.  Thus  the 
mind  is  led  farther  and  farther  back,  each  sec- 
ondary cause  of  the  chain  resolving  itself,  as 
soon  as  reached,  into  an  effect  of  something 
constantly  receding. 

In  this  constant  retrogression  where  shall  we 


26  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

stop,  or  is  there  any  stopping  place?  As  long 
as  we  pursue  the  line  of  changes,  events,  ap- 
pearances, there  is  no  halting-place.  The  end 
flies  before  us  as  the  rainbow  before  the  pur- 
suing boy.  Can  we  be  content,  then,  with  such 
a  never-ending  series,  in  which  there  is  nothing 
to  bring  us  to  a  halt  except  our  own  weariness  ? 
This  is  always  unsatisfactory  to  the  intellect. 
The  intellect  demands  a  cause  of  the  whole  chain 
as  one  total  as  imperatively  as  it  demands  a 
cause  for  each  successive  part.  Otherwise  we 
have  a  line  of  effects  without  a  single  genuine 
cause.  To  find  the  real  cause  we  must  go  back 
to  that  which  does  not  disclose  itself  as  an  effect 
requiring  another  cause,  but  is  a  sufficient 
reason  for  itself,  a  self-subsistent  activity.  As 
the  first  element  of  the  idea  of  cause  is  the  ret- 
rogressive motion,  so  the  second  element  is  the 
halt.  An  end,  a  final  rest  and  repose,  as  has 
truly  been  said,  is  included  in  the  very  idea  of 
cause.  To  accept  in  its  stead  an  infinite  series 
of  antecedents  and  consequents  is  to  accept  and 
follow  out  the  first  half  of  the  idea  of  cause — 
the  regression  toward  a  cause,  back  from  every 
effect — but  to  reject  the  other  equally  essential 
part  of  the  idea — the  repose  in  cause  as  a  final 
ground.  If  cause  is  not  a  requisite  of  the 
mind,  then  believe  from  the  first  that  no 
event  needs  a  cause.  If  cause  is  a  requi- 
site   of    reason,    then    believe    in    the    kind    of 


THE  COSMIC  MOTOR  POWER      27 

cause  that  it  craves,  a  cause  that  is  ultimate. 

As  the  principle  of  causality,  then,  can  find 
no  resting  place  in  the  chain  of  events,  in  the 
surface  of  appearances  or  in  the  meshes  of  con- 
tingent conditions  and  as  in  these  paths  it  is  al- 
ways necessary  for  it,  like  Dickens'  "Poor  Joe" 
in  the  streets  of  London,  to  ''move  on,''  where 
shall  it  find  rest?  Only  by  going  beyond  the 
web  of  changes  to  the  unchangeable  Changer; 
by  passing  behind  the  accidental  to  that  with 
which  there  is  no  chance ;  by  proceeding 
through  the  shell  of  phenomena  to  the  Reality 
hid  witliin  it. 

But  here,  perhaps,  it  will  be  asked:  what  is 
the  cause  of  this  Ultimate  Cause,  this  Abso- 
lute Reality?  Why  does  not  this  cause  need 
another  cause  behind  it,  as  much  as  everything 
else?  If  this  cause  can  be  conceived  as  existing 
uncaused,  why  cannot  other  things?  For  this 
reason:  The  principle  of  causality  is  not  that 
everything  should  have  a  cause,  but  that  every 
event  or  change,  everything  that  begins  to  be 
or  shows  in  itself  the  qualities  of  an  effect, 
should  have  a  cause.  As  long  as  we  are  on 
the  plane  of  the  changing,  the  effected,  the 
phenomenal,  we  must  go  backwards  and  back- 
wards in  search  of  a  sufficient  origin.  But 
for  that  which  is  essentially  a  cause,  ex- 
hibiting no  marks  of  being  an  effect  or  de- 
rived    from     anything     else     and    which     has 


28  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

substance  and  power,  the  reason  needs  not  to 
demand  a  cause  outside  of  it.  It  is  sufficient 
as  its  own  cause,  self-subsistent,  and  the  mo- 
ment we  reach  this  "Permanent  Reality,"  the 
law  which  we  must  obey  is  no  longer  the  first 
part  of  the  causal  law,  that  which  demands 
search  for  an  unfound  cause,  but  the  latter 
part  of  it,  that  which  requires  rest  and  content 
in  the  found  cause,  the  Enduring  Real. 

Such  in  general  is  the  idea  of  cause.  What 
is  the  bearing  of  this  principle  upon  the  origin 
of  the  universe? 

As  was  declared  at  the  outset,  the  history 
of  the  world,  as  far  as  we  can  trace  it,  is  an 
incessant  series  of  changes,  motions  and  trans- 
formations. Looking  at  it,  as  a  whole,  it  car- 
ries us  back  irresistibly  to  a  beginning  on  the 
farther  side  of  which  something  other  than  it- 
self must  be  assumed.  No  theory  of  the  uni- 
verse that  has  any  regard  for  its  actual  laws 
and  facts  can  avoid  such  an  assumption.  Take 
the  Darwinian  theory,  for  example.  Trace 
back  man  to  his  simian  ancestor,  horse  to  hlp- 
parlon  and  orohippus,  dog  to  wolf,  bird  to  rep- 
tile, each  walking  and  creeping  and  swimming 
thing  to  a  marine  ascidlan  or  some  other 
equally  low  and  primitive  form.  The  question 
recurs:  "What  power  fashioned  this  primitive 
form  and  stored  within  it  these  myriad  poten- 
tialities?"    Suppose,    then,    we    aim    at    thor- 


THE  COSMIC  MOTOR  POWER      29 

oughness  and  conceive  of  primal  matter  as  the 
universal  mother.  Suppose  that  life  and  mind 
were  implicated  in  the  nebula ;  suppose  that  air 
and  water,  metal,  plant  and  animal  are  but  crys- 
tallizations from  the  molten  spheres,  and  that 
the  whole  history  of  our  universe  is  simply  a 
history  of  the  aggregation  of  its  atoms  or  elec- 
trons. Still  the  question  of  Creative  Power  has 
not  been  answered.  It  has  only  been  pushed 
farther  back.  It  recurs  as  before,  "Whence 
this  Primal  Matter  and  its  Formative  Potency? 
What  was  the  cause  and  origin  of  this  evolu- 
tional process?"  This  question  must  still  be 
met  and  answered  somehow. 

Now  I  claim  that  no  answer  is  satisfactory 
that  presents  any  part  of  the  existing  order  of 
changing  appearances  as  the  cause  and  origin 
of  Nature.  The  origin  of  Nature  must  have 
been  anterior  and  superior  to  Nature's  laws  and 
forces. 

In  the  first  place,  the  existing  matter  of  the 
world  could  not  have  been  the  motor  power 
producing  the  present  world-process.  What- 
ever changes  take  place  in  matter  are  forms  of 
motion,  either  motions  of  masses  or  of  the 
atoms.  But  matter  has  no  power  to  move  it- 
self. It  possesses  no  spontaneity  of  action. 
An  essential  idea  of  matter,  necessary  to  all 
scientific  dealing  with  it,  is  that  of  Its  inertness. 
If  a  mass  of  matter  could  start  itself  into  mo- 


30  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

tion,  or  bring  itself  to  a  halt,  or  alter  the  di- 
rection of  its  motion  without  the  action  of 
something  outside  of  itself,  no  science  of  it 
would  be  possible.  "Whatever  matter  is,"  saj^s 
one  of  the  most  distinguished  men  of  science  of 
our  day,  M.  Leon  Foucault,  "physics  should  al- 
ways introduce  it  into  its  calculations  only  as 
a  coefficient  of  inertia." 

In  whatever  condition  and  position,  then, 
matter  originally  existed,  in  that  it  must  re- 
main unless  acted  on  by  other  agency.  If  at 
first  at  rest,  it  must  always  have  remained  at 
rest,  so  long  as  no  cause  from  without  disturbed 
its  equilibrium.  This  is  a  general,  universal 
truth. 

Why  did  this  primal  nebula  stir  at  all  from 
its  state  of  universal  diffusion  and  begin  at  a 
certain  time  to  consolidate  .^^  Now,  the  scien- 
tific materialist  who  dispenses  with  a  Creative 
power  usually  supposes  that  originally  the 
whole  immensity  of  space  was  filled  with  nebu- 
lous matter  of  uniform  density  or  rarity,  and 
each  atom  of  that  matter  was  endowed  with 
homogeneous  kinds  and  intensities  of  force 
diffused  uniformly.  But  in  that  case  all 
force  with  which  such  an  infinite  mass  of  abso- 
lutely homogeneous  matter  was  endowed  would 
act  in  all  directions  alike,  and  would  conse- 
quently produce  no  result.  In  such  a  system 
nothing  has  weight,  for  there  is  no  attractive 


THE  COSMIC  MOTOR  POWER      31 

center.  Heat  and  light  would  be  impossible,  con- 
ditioned as  they  are  upon  unequal  vibrations, 
different  media,  and  diverse  molecular  arrange- 
ments. Electricity  and  magnetism,  likewise,  for 
the  same  reason,  would  lie  torpid.  For  the  mani- 
festation of  physical  activities  and  changes 
there  must  have  been  in  the  world-nebula  a  con- 
siderable primary  differentiation,  not  due  to 
the  laws  of  matter  as  such.  For  the  condensa- 
tion of  the  nebula.  In  the  first  place,  there  is 
Implied  a  differentiation  between  the  nebula  and 
the  vacant,  external  space.  And  secondly,  to 
cause  the  rotation  of  the  nebula  there  Is  re- 
quired either  an  original  rotary  impulse  or  such 
diversity  of  form  or  substance  as  would  occa- 
sion revolution.  For  the  primary  steps,  then, 
of  the  evolution  process,  the  consolidation  and 
motion  of  the  heavenly  bodies,  a  cause  external 
to  the  nebulous  matter  must  be  supposed. 

"But  why,"  the  scientific  materialist  will 
probably  here  Interpose,  "do  you  suppose 
primal  matter  originally  to  have  been  in  re- 
pose? That  is  a  gratuitous  assumption. 
Should  we  not  rather  conceive  matter  as  a  sub- 
stance never  at  rest  but  always  In  motion,  from 
all  eternity ;  and  in  that  case  its  Inertia  would 
assist  In  maintaining  it  in  motion?" 

Doubtless  that  is  a  more  probable  supposi- 
tion. But  now  let  us  consider  the  bearing  of 
well-known  scientific  laws  on  this.     The  scien- 


22  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

tific  facts  of  the  expenditure  of  motion  show 
that  if  material  motion,  unsustained  or  re- 
cruited by  anything  else,  has  been  going  on 
from  all  eternity,  the  motion  must  have  been  in 
this  infinity  of  time  either  destroyed  or  ren- 
dered infinitesimal  and  inappreciable.  In  vir- 
tue of  the  laws  of  energy,  the  stock  of  working 
power  in  the  universe  is  constantly  undergoing 
exhaustion.  Heat  diffuses  itself  in  all  direc- 
tions in  frigid  interstellar  space.  Magnetism 
and  electricity  radiate  on  all  sides.  Pressures 
balance  themselves  against  pressures.  The  ef- 
fective energy  of  the  universe  is  continually, 
therefore,  divided  and  subdivided  into  insensi- 
ble quantities ;  the  opposed  forces  more  and 
more  neutralize  each  other ;  and  the  working 
power  of  these  balanced  energies  is  now  lost. 
Potentially  the  sum  of  force  may  remain  the 
same,  but  practically  it  is  expended  more  and 
more  beyond  all  natural  recovery.  Within  our 
planetary  system,  the  bulk  of  space  filled  by 
active  material  bodies,  like  the  sun  and  the  in- 
candescent planets,  capable  of  radiating  en- 
ergy, is  only,  as  in  comparison  with  the  sphere 
on  whose  rim  Neptune  revolves,  as  one  to  many 
billions,  and  even  if  the  whole  of  this  planetary 
system  were  filled  with  active  matter  and  en- 
ergy, it  would  be  only  as  one  to  eleven  trillions 
in  comparison  with  the  immense  sphere  of  inter- 
stellar space  between  us  and  the  nearest  fixed 


THE  COSMIC  MOTOR  POWER      33 

star.  According  to  physical  principles,  the 
immensely  preponderant  interstellar  space 
where  matter  is  so  thinly  diffused  must  suck 
away  and  consume  the  working  energy  of  the 
solar  system.  In  a  sufficient  time  it  would  be 
entirely  consumed.  Infinite  time  must  be  suffi- 
cient. 

If,  therefore,  motion  has  been  going  on  from 
eternity,  and  the  working  energy  of  the  uni- 
verse has  been  subject  to  this  infinite  expendi- 
ture, we  should  behold  a  universe  totally  dif- 
ferent from  this  present  ever-bubbling  fountain 
of  force.  We  should  find  it,  through  its  uni- 
versal and  torpid  equilibrium,  sunk  in  a  sort  of 
living  death.  It  would  be,  as  an  able  man  of 
science  has  well  described  it,  "an  immense  tomb, 
as  it  were,  where  would  sleep  the  frozen  forms 
of  existences  and  the  germs  of  extinguished 
life." 

Thirdly,  the  hypothesis  of  the  eternity  of 
the  cosmic  motions  leaves  open  also  the  equally 
pressing  question,  "Who  or  what  directs  these 
motions?"  Nature  exhibits  the  atoms  to  us 
not  as  heaped  together  at  random,  not  as  fly- 
ing about  aimlessly  and  purposelessly,  but  as 
continually  guided  in  certain  paths  and  ar- 
ranged in  orderly  groups.  From  the  primitive 
diffused  state  they  are  concentrated  into  orbs, 
marshalled  geometrically  into  crystals  and 
cells,    and   built   up    into   plants    and    animals. 


34  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

What  directs  them  in  these  processes  by 
which  they  acquire  such  new  properties  and 
perfections?  Taine  says  that  it  is  by  "the 
blind  instinct  of  artist  Nature."  What 
bolder  self-contradiction!  If  Nature  be  blind, 
it  is  no  artist.  The  very  condition  of  art 
is  conscious  purpose,  harmonious  aim.  There 
is  a  serious  question  here  which  naturalism 
must  solve  if  it  would  make  itself  accept- 
able to  human  reason.  Assuming  nothing 
more  than  inert  matter  and  eternal  motion,  how 
shall  we  account  for  the  direction  of  the  atoms 
in  the  manifold,  various,  orderly,  and  artistic 
— yes,  wisely  did  Taine  use  that  word — the  ar- 
tistic processes  of  the  world?  Is  it  at  all  prob- 
able that  merely  material  motion,  unintelli- 
gent, incapable  of  purposive  selection,  should 
invariably  move  to  such  concordant  and  ideal 
results  as  the  world  exhibits  to  us? 

And  if  so,  who  or  what  directs  it?  If  we 
inquire  what  has  directed  the  course  of  any 
particular  motion,  we  shall  be  referred  to  some 
previous  motion,  and  the  direction  of  this  will 
be  referred  again  to  some  still  antecedent  mo- 
tion. But  what  directs  the  first  motion  or  the 
series  as  a  whole?  Can  we  conceive  it  as  self- 
directed?  Bear  in  mind,  as  you  must,  that 
this  first  motion,  or  whole  scries  of  motions,  is, 
by  the  very  hypothesis  of  the  materialist, 
destitute  of  any  such  sensation  or  emotion  as 


THE  COSMIC  MOTOR  POWER      35 

would  stimulate  to  a  single  tentative  move- 
ment; it  is  devoid  of  the  will  able  to  make  an 
effort,  and  is  altogether  without  the  conscious- 
ness by  which  it  might  understand  at  what  par- 
ticular time  or  in  what  particular  place  or 
direction  of  space  to  make  it.  Ask  your- 
self if,  in  these  conditions,  you  can  conceive 
of  this  motion  or  series  of  motions  as  directing 
itself.  On  the  contrary,  the  conception  of  un- 
intelligent motion  directing  itself  is  incon- 
ceivable to  an  intelligent  mind.  Even  if  mat- 
ter be  supposed  to  be  possessed  of  lo- 
comotive energies  and  to  be  in  motion 
from  all  eternity,  the  fit  and  orderly  direc- 
tion of  that  motion  requires  a  cause  superior 
to  it. 

For  energy  itself  has  no  directivity  resident 
within.  Its  antecedents  propel  it  intensely  or 
weakly,  according  as  it  is  full  or  partially 
stocked.  But  they  do  not  account  for  its  tak- 
ing one  path  rather  than  another.  Energy 
by  itself  is  like  a  runaway  automobile,  moving 
onward  where  circumstances  permit  it,  and 
sooner  or  later,  inevitably  arriving  at  ruin  or 
a  full  stop.  Wherever  it  moves  successfully 
and  continuously  we  infer  that  there  is  an  in- 
telligent guide  at  the  lever. 

For  the  cause  of  the  motions  and  changes 
of  the  universe  there  is  only  one  source  to 
which    we    can    look, — the    forces    of    Nature. 


66  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

Now  if  we  look  at  these  forces  in  reference  one 
to  another,  we  discover  most  significant  rela- 
tions between  them.  We  find  them  melting 
one  into  the  other,  converging  toward  a  single 
principle  hiding  itself  within  these  varied  and 
shifting  phases.  A  force  starting  as  gravity 
may  shift  into  heat,  this  into  electricity,  elec- 
tricity into  light  and  sound ;  these  in  their  turn, 
acting  on  the  living  creature,  transform  them- 
selves into  nervous,  muscular,  and  cerebral  mo- 
tion; these  raise  again  the  fallen  weight,  and 
the  circuit  again  is  ready  to  recommence.  And 
in  all  this  cycle  no  force  has  been  lost. 
Diverse  as  their  successive  phases  have  been, 
they  are  but  modulations  of  one  stream  of 
energy  issuing  from  a  single  fountain-head  of 
power. 

Our  problem,  then,  has  been  simplified,  so 
that  instead  of  a  thousand  and  one  particular 
forces,  we  have  to  deal  only  with  one  grand 
cosmic  force  as  the  motor  power  of  the  uni- 
verse. What  then  is  the  essential  character 
of  force?  This  is  the  question  of  supreme  in- 
terest. For  as  we  interpret  force,  so  must  we 
interpret  the  whole  universe.  Can  this  perma- 
nent principle,  running  through  all  phenomena, 
the  same  yesterday,  to-day,  and  forever,  be  any 
unintelligent  thing?  Can  this  marvelous 
unity,  weaving  daily  the  web  and  woof  of  the 
universe,    be    any    necessitated,    material    sub- 


THE  COSMIC  MOTOR  POWER      37 

stance?     Or  is  it  to  be  owned  as  an  intelligent, 
free  and  spiritual  Being? 

How  is  it  that  we  become  aware  of  force? 
Do  we  perceive  it  directly  in  material  things? 
We  see  the  frost-loosened  crag  topple  over  and 
violently  bury  itself  in  the  plain  below.  We 
see  the  lightning-bolt  fall  and  the  forest  tree 
crash  suddenly  in  riven  fragments.  But  we 
do  not  really  see  any  coercive  energy  connecting 
one  of  these  events  with  what  follows  it.  We 
see  only  a  succession  of  antecedents  and  conse- 
quents. Were  the  line  of  events  always  ex- 
ternal to  us,  we  should  know  nothing  of  force, 
only  of  the  succession  of  changes.  It  is  only 
when  the  outward  movement  impinges  upon  our 
senses  and  we  feel  its  pressure  and  power,  and 
especially  when,  in  return,  we  ourselves  act  upon 
the  outward  world  and  are  conscious  of  the  ef- 
fort of  the  attempt  and  that  we  predetermine 
the  result  accomplished,  that  we  acquire  the 
idea  of  force.  Man  is  ever  busy  in  this  exer- 
tion of  force.  He  analyzes  and  combines  his 
sensations,  framing  at  will  new  ideas,  pure 
creations  of  his  mind.  These  ideals,  under  the 
felt  impulse  of  want  or  aspiration,  he  strug- 
gles to  realize.  He  remoulds  matter.  Ho 
transforms  the  face  of  the  earth.  The  lump 
of  clay  becomes  a  bowl,  the  iron  ore  is  turned 
into  needles  and  knives.  Man  can  even  tame 
his  own  passions  and  carve  his  own  personality. 


38  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

Preconceiving  the  result  at  which  these  volitions 
aim  before  he  puts  them  forth,  he  knows  his  vo- 
lition as  a  force  effective  of  that  result.  That 
we  possess  force  is  at  once  the  lowest  and  the 
highest  lesson  of  our  experience.  It  is  from 
the  consciousness  of  our  own  possession  and 
exertion  of  it,  that  we  come  to  know  it,  and 
later,  when  we  see  outside  of  ourselves  succes- 
sions of  changes  in  Nature,  that  we  conceive 
force  as  binding  them  together. 

This  is  not  only  the  assertion  of  common 
sense  and  of  the  general  consciousness,  but  it  is 
the  judgment  of  the  most  eminent  thinkers  in 
philosophy  and  science.  The  list  of  authorities 
that  might  be  adduced  here  would  include  the 
foremost  names  of  recent  times,  such  as  Prof. 
W.  B.  Carpenter,  John  Fiske,  Professors  Cope, 
LeConte,  Schiller  and  the  Swedish  naturalist, 
Bunge.  Especially  noteworthy  is  the  testi- 
mony of  Herbert  Spencer.  In  discussing  this 
very  point  of  the  real  nature  of  force,  he  em- 
phatically says:  "The  force  by  which  we  our- 
selves produce  changes  and  which  serves  to 
symbolize  the  cause  of  changes  in  general  is  the 
final  disclosure  of  analysis." 

With  equal  positiveness  Prof.  John  Le- 
Conte, the  noted  geologist,  once  wrote:  "We 
cannot  conceive  of  phenomena  without  force 
or  of  effects  without  cause,  because  we  are  in- 
tensely   conscious   of  being    ourselves    through 


THE  COSMIC  MOTOR  POWER      39 

our  wills  an  active  cause  of  external  phenom- 
ena," 

In  further  confirmation  of  this  view  I  may 
appeal  to  the  distinguished  physiologist, 
Bunge,  who  advocates  "interpretation  of  what 
transpires  in  the  external  world  of  material 
organization  by  our  experience  of  causation 
in  the  internal  world  of  our  own  consciousness." 

Our  persevering  analysis  reaches,  then,  this 
noble  result:  that  the  grand  cosmic  Force,  the 
motor  power  of  the  universe,  must  be  connected 
with  will  and  intelligence,  of  which  it  is  a  func- 
tion and  expression.  Inasmuch  as  this  energy 
and  outflow  is  infinite,  the  fountain  head .  of 
power  must  be  equally  infinite.  It  must  be  no 
less  than  an  all-powerful  Spirit  and  eternal 
Mind,  of  which  the  diversified  phenomena  of 
Nature  are  simply  the  manifold  phases. 

Just  as  from  the  sun  constantly  flows  forth 
the  ever-renewed  photosphere  of  heat  and  light, 
making  known  the  hidden  fount  of  energy 
within,  and  just  as  the  human  body  is  moulded 
and  quickened  by  the  inner  soul — so  out  of  the 
secret  bosom  of  the  Almighty  the  outward  uni- 
verse is  developed  and  guided,  a  glorious  or- 
ganism by  which  the  Invisible  makes  himself 
visible.  With  fascinated  awe  we  see  how  He 
manifests  in  astronomic  space  the  miniature 
of  his  stature,  in  geologic  time  some  fragment 
of  his   eternity   and  in  the  cosmic  order  some 


40  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

shadow  of  his  constancy.  In  the  plants  He 
discloses  a  little  of  his  living  activity  and  in 
seeds  somewhat  of  his  creative  energy.  In  the 
flowers  He  reveals  some  reflection  of  his  beauty, 
in  bird-song  something  of  the  divine  music,  in 
the  higher  animals  the  dawning  radiance  of  his 
sensibility  and  intelligence,  and  at  last  in  man 
He  incarnates  himself  most  fully,  displaying 
his  higher  attributes,  thought,  righteousness, 
self-consciousness  and  self-directing  will. 


CHAPTER  III 
ATOM  AND  SPIRIT 

In  the  preceding  chapter  I  have  presented 
the  reasons  why  philosophic  minds  find  in  the 
great  energies  of  the  universe  the  varied  ac- 
tivities of  a  Divine  Mind  and  WilL  Objec- 
tions, of  course,  have  been  brought  forward  to 
break  the  force  of  this  argument.  One  of 
those  most  often  urged  is  that  to  assume  such 
an  identity  between  the  forces  within  humanity 
and  those  without  as  I  have  advocated  would 
compel  us  to  endow  the  falling  stone  with  con- 
sciousness and  even  with  a  sense  of  muscular 
tension. 

But  scientific  speculation  itself  is  moving 
fast  toward  more  or  less  similar  conclusions. 
In  the  alembic  of  modem  scientific  discovery 
and  analysis  the  old-time  material  particles, 
hard  and  dead,  have  become  every  year  more 
immaterial.  The  infinitesimal  atoms  have  been 
dissected  by  Prof.  J.  J.  Thomson  and  his  fel- 
low electricians  into  planetary  groups  of 
corpuscles  or  electrons,  thousands  of  times 
smaller  than  the  atoms  and  still  further  be- 
yond ken  of  even  the  ultra-microscope  that  can 

catch  the  gleam  of  particles  which  are  only  one 

41 


42  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

two  millionth  part  of  a  millimetre  in  diameter. 

When  it  is  asked  what  is  the  nature  of  these 
infinitesimal  electrons  constituting  the  atoms, 
the  experts  to  be  sure,  quite  disagree.  One 
school  surmises  that  they  are  condensations  of 
that  primitive  substance,  the  universal  ether 
which  fills  all  the  interstellar  and  interatomic 
vacuum.  Another  school  says  that  all  we 
know  of  them  is  that  they  are  electric  charges 
or  centres  of  negative  electric  force.  If  they 
themselves  are  not  altogether  immaterial,  there 
must  be  between  them,  and  as  their  still  minuter 
components,  some  positive  substance  which  is 
even  less  material.  Thus  the  deeper  science 
goes  in  its  search,  the  more  transcendental  and 
mysterious  does  the  substratum  of  the  cosmos 
appear. 

The  life  in  living  things,  the  sentience  in 
animal  organism  and  the  mind  in  human  beings 
are  facts.  They  cannot  have  come  from  noth- 
ing. What  is  the  most  rational  explanation 
of  their  origin? 

Modern  Theism  most  cordially  accepts  the 
theory  of  evolution  as  the  method  by  which 
suns,  worlds  and  all  their  denizens  came  Into 
being;  but  it  holds  that  a  Supreme  Conscious 
Life  has  been  and  is  the  guiding  power  of  this 
developmental  process.  A  dominant  Intelli- 
gence is  the  superior  Power  to  which  matter 
and  force  have  been  the  instruments.     It  is  a 


ATOM  AND  SPIRIT  43 

Creative  Spirit,  fully  equipped  from  the  first, 
that  has  patiently  worked  through  countless 
ages,  moulding  the  forms  of  the  universe, 
charging  matter  with  life  and  mind,  develop- 
ing species  and  unfolding  and  guiding  all  the 
varied  developments  of  the  cosmos. 

The  materialistic  Monism  that  is  now  fash- 
ionable takes  up,  on  the  contrary,  an  opposite 
view.  There  was,  at  first,  it  maintains,  no  con- 
scious Divine  Mind,  but  only  the  latent  life  and 
mind,  the  vital  and  mental  germs  within  the 
primal  nebula  which  gradually,  by  certain 
atomic  interactions,  became  unlocked  and  de- 
veloped into  feeling,  will  and  thought,  as  the 
organic  material  forms,  of  which  they  were  the 
superior  sides,  were  elaborated.  Life  and  In- 
telligence did  not  exist  as  potencies  earlier  and 
superior  to  the  original  world-stuff"  that  cradled 
all,  but  they  were  later  and  derived  products, 
phosphorescent  gleams  and  glows,  mystical 
lights  and  glories,  somehow  attending  the 
chemical  groupings  and  reactions  of  the  cor- 
poreal atoms. 

Prof.  Ernst  Haeckel  and  other  scientific 
theorists  of  the  day  maintain  that  the  earliest 
living  forms  were  spontaneously  generated 
from  a  protoplasmic  slime,  not  yet  endowed  with 
life;  it  was  by  the  interaction  of  ordinary  mat- 
ter and  energy  that  this  was  accomplished. 
Every    atom    has    a    potential    life    and    feel- 


44*  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

ing,  and  every  cell  a  rudimentary  sensibility 
or  cell-soul.  The  attractions  and  repulsions 
of  gases  and  chemical  elements  are  elemental 
likes  and  dislikes  which  bespeak  latent  will  and 
sensation.  It  is  from  such  embryo  vitalities 
and  intelligences,  in  each  crystal  and  salt  and. 
electric  circuit,  that  scientific  Naturalism  sup- 
poses the  marvelous  endowments  of  bee  and 
bird,  mathematician  and  inventor  to  have 
arisen. 

Which  of  these  two  views,  then,  supplies  the 
more  rational  explanation  of  the  beginning  of 
things  ? 

Let  us  try  to  realize  In  thought  this  theory 
of  the  materialistic  Monists — that  the  cosmic 
Life  and  Mind  existed  at  first  only  in  a  ger- 
minal form.  What  insuperable  difficulties  does 
such  a  conception  present  to  thought !  Think 
of  all  the  harmonious  laws  and  co-ordinations 
that  Nature  presents ;  the  mutual  ministries  of 
flowers  and  insects ;  the  wonderful  pairing 
of  masculine  and  feminine  organs  and  instincts ; 
and  the  coincident  mathematics  of  planets 
above  and  plants  below.  How  absolutely  un- 
equal to  these  wonders  of  the  vegetable  and  ani- 
mal kingdoms  is  the  supposition  which  main- 
tains that  originally  there  was  in  the  world  as 
the  source  of  these  marvels  only  a  rudimentary 
mind  and  a  germinal  will! 

Many  as  have  been  the  sarcasms  cast  at  the 


ATOM  AND  SPIRIT  45 

Theistic  theory  of  the  Divine  Being  as  a 
"carpenter  God"  who  made  the  world  as  a 
hewer  of  wood  makes  a  house,  nevertheless  it 
seems  to  me  a  more  dignified  and  more  rational 
view  than  the  fanciful  theory  of  the  Infantile 
Gods,  these  embryotic,  atomic  Deities,  toddling 
and  lisping  in  their  w^orld-cradle,  in  which  ma- 
terialistic Monism  would  have  us  believe. 

That  most  distinguished  scientific  philoso- 
pher of  the  last  century,  Herbert  Spencer,  once 
criticised  the  Theistic  idea  of  a  Divine  Mind 
as  before  matter  and  antecedent  to  the  various 
processes  of  Nature  and  governing  them,  on  the 
ground  that  it  is  not  possible  to  conceive  of  all 
the  actions  throughout  the  universe,  all  the 
motions  of  the  multitudinous  stars  in  space,  the 
revolutions  of  all  their  satellites  and  the  in- 
finitely multiplied  physical  and  organic  proc- 
esses going  on  in  each  of  the  cosmic  bodies 
as  flowing  from  an  originating  Mind.  The 
English  philosopher  seemed  to  fancy  that  the 
multitude  and  complexity  of  these  processes 
are  too  much  for  intelligence,  even  an  Infinite 
Intelligence,  to  manage.  Amidst  such  a 
throng  of  intricate  details  Almighty  Mind  (he 
seemed  to  think)  would  become  distracted.  In 
the  presence  of  such  manifold  gyrations  Om- 
nipotence would  become  dizzied.  In  such  a 
boundless  field  of  operations  Omniscience  would 
have  to  neglect  a  great  deal. 


46  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

Now,  of  course,  no  human  being  can  claim 
with  reason  to  be  able  to  follow  out  in  imagi- 
native detail  just  how  the  Divine  Mind  can  per- 
sonally and  simultaneously  direct  all  the  move- 
ments of  the  universe.  But  without  hesitation 
it  may  be  asserted  (and  a  confident  appeal 
may  be  made  to  the  common  sense  of  any 
normal  man  to  sustain  the  appeal)  that  if 
there  be  any  inconceivability  in  supposing  a 
Divine  Intelligence  that  is  from  the  outset  free, 
full,  active  and  perfect,  as  the  cause  and  guide 
of  the  infinite  processes  of  the  world,  there  is 
certainly  a  hundred  times  as  much  inconceiv- 
ability in  supposing  a  cosmic  Life  which  for 
ages  was  rudimentary,  somnolent  and  infantile, 
or  a  cosmic  Mind  which  only  gradually  awoke 
to  consciousness  and  grew  up  to  the  grade  of 
mental  development  now  correspondent  to  the 
amazing  phenomena  of  our  cosmos. 

And  if  there  be  inconceivability  in  the  best 
ideas  man  can  form  of  a  guiding  Mind  as  con- 
nected with  the  evolution  of  the  world,  and  if 
there  be  difficulty  in  realizing  in  thought  the 
Theistic  conception  of  a  consciousness,  ante- 
cedent to  the  myriad  movements  and  complex 
processes  of  the  Universe  and  directive  of  them, 
there  is  surely  a  thousand  times  more  incredi- 
bility in  the  chance  grouping  of  atoms,  in  the 
undirected  dance  of  molecules,  or  the  blind  push- 
ing and  pulling  of  unconscious  forces  as  build- 


ATOM  AND  SPIRIT  47 

ing  up  the  Kosmic  Temple,  fulfilling  in  it,  as  it 
has,  ideas  of  the  purest  reason  and  the  pro- 
foundest  wisdom,  but  none  of  them  intended; 
carrying  the  grand  world  structure  up  from 
story  to  story,  from  detail  to  detail  in  a  match- 
less harmony  of  ideal  finish,  yet  all  un-planned ; 
element  adjusted  to  element,  force  tuned  to  law 
and  law  fitted  to  life,  yet  the  whole  brought 
about  without  foresight  or  reasonable  direction 
— certainly  this  is  the  most  amazing  of  incredi- 
bilities !  Inert  matter,  sightless  motion  and  un- 
conscious force  equal  to  unfolding  and  guiding 
a  universe,  but  a  Divine  Mind  not  equal  to  it! 
If  anything  that  distinguished  writers  propose 
may  without  hesitation  be  called  nonsense, 
surely  this  deserves  the  brand. 

As  the  source  and  guide  of  the  stupendous 
powers  and  marvelous  activities  of  crystal  and 
cell,  star-reaching  light  wave  and  cosmos- 
questioning  brain,  we  can  look  at  no  lower 
source  (if  we  would  escape  the  pit  of  irration- 
ality) than  the  Theist's  hypothesis  of  a  full 
Consciousness  and  Will  at  the  heart  of  things. 
That  grand  current  of  force  that  sweeps 
through  the  varied  mechanisms  of  the  world, 
keeping  all  its  million  wheels  in  motion,  must 
be  the  manifestations  and  effect  of  nothing 
lower  than  an  Infinite  Will.  If  this  is  a  ground- 
less conclusion,  then  the  conception  of  our  own 
muscular  and  mental  efforts  as  manifestations 


48  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

of  the  intelligent  will  within  the  human  being 
must  also  be  pronounced  a  groundless  conclu- 
sion. 

But  (it  is  further  asked  by  certain  philo- 
sophic critics)  is  it  not  an  extravagant  demand 
to  require  us  to  infer  that  volition  causes  all 
these  multitudinous  activities  of  the  world  just 
because  it  causes  some  one  particular  thing? 

As  Hume  long  ago  put  it :  "What  peculiar 
privilege  has  this  little  agitation  of  the  brain 
which  we  call  thought  that  we  must  thus  make 
it  the  model  of  the  universe?"  Why  should  we 
leap  from  this  single  instance  of  mental  causa- 
tion to  a  universal  truth?  Because,  I  answer, 
it  is  the  one  case  where  we  get  a  direct  interior 
view  of  force,  all  other  cases  affording  us  only 
indirect,  external  observations.  In  this  one  in- 
stance we  are  admitted,  as  it  were,  behind  the 
scenes.  Suppose  that  some  wonderful  moving 
statue,  which  at  first  we  had  only  gazed  at 
from  a  distance,  we  were  allowed  at  length  to 
touch  and  then,  in  that  touch,  felt  a  living  hu- 
man being  within.  Suppose  that  there  was  a 
marvelous  automatic  figure  at  whose  intelli- 
gence all  the  world  had  wondered,  but  suppose 
that,  after  a  while,  a  glimpse  had  been  obtained 
of  its  interior  and  it  was  seen  to  be  actually 
worked  by  a  man.  Shall  we  be  accused  of  il- 
logicalness  in  henceforth  interpreting  these 
outward  manifestations  of  the  apparent  mech- 


ATOM  AND  SPIRIT  49 

anisms  by  the  one  inward  glance  which  we  have 
enjoyed?  If  we  accept  the  physical  theory  of 
mind  which  these  scientific  objectors  maintain, 
then  mind  is  not  to  be  looked  upon  as  one  force 
out  of  many,  but  as  an  aspect  which  all  the 
forces  of  Nature  assume  when  they  pass 
through  the  brain  and  are  viewed  from  within. 
Whether  the  force  be  gravity,  heat,  light, 
sound,  magnetism,  electricity,  or  chemical  af- 
finity to  start  with,  yet  as  soon  as  it  strikes  the 
nerve  and  runs  up  in  its  vibratile  course  to  the 
brain  it  draws  back  the  material  veil  and  dis- 
closes clearly  in  that  place  and  for  that  mo- 
ment, however  brief,  its  sentient  character 
and  mental  qualities.  Have  these  repeated  in- 
ward glimpses  into  every  material  energy,  re- 
vealing successively  in  each  a  spiritual  side, 
nothing  that  may  serve  to  give  a  new  interpre- 
tation to  the  external  aspects  of  these  forces? 
As  well  say  that  the  judgments  of  eye,  touch, 
and  smell,  which  a  mock  wax  apple  may  have 
fraudulently  secured,  ought  not  to  be  corrected 
by  any  evidence  of  the  mouth  that  has  tried  to 
eat  it,  because  taste  is  but  one  sense  out  of 
three.  One  bite  into  the  centre  of  a  lump  of 
painted  wax  is  all-sufficient,  both  practically 
and  logically,  to  remake  our  judgment  of  it. 
And  so  one  mental  state,  one  inward  experience 
of  a  physical  force  is  enough  for  a  new  inter- 
pretation of  that  force. 


50  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

The  very  school  that  objects,  in  re- 
gard to  the  interpretation  of  force,  to  any 
generalization  from  a  single  instance,  con- 
spicuously employs  the  same  procedure  and  de- 
fends its  logicalness  in  its  scientific  researches. 

The  epoch-making  discoveries  of  the  radio- 
active elements  and  the  astonishing  revolution 
in  chemical  knowledge  and  theories  that  have 
resulted  from  the  researches  of  Madame  Curie 
and  her  fellow  workers  in  this  field  depend 
chiefly  on  logical  inductions  of  this  same 
nature.  They  are  generalizations  from  a 
single  kind  of  chemical  element.  In  fact,  what 
other  ground  is  there  for  believing  that  the 
animals  with  whom  we  play,  the  neighbors  with 
whom  we  talk  and  the  friends  with  whom  we 
live  are  not  automatic  machines,  but  are  feeling, 
thinking  and  willing  beings  like  ourselves,  ex- 
cept this  same  assumption,  that  when  we  ob- 
serve in  them  operations  and  activities  similar 
to  our  own,  the  cause  in  each  creature  must 
be  of  the  same  psychic  type  as  we  know  it  to  be 
in  ourselves. 

That  force  originates  in  will  is,  then,  that 
which  the  inward  view  of  it,  given  by  conscious- 
ness, attests ;  and  this  is  also  what  the  facts  of 
the  world  require.  They  demand  that  the  pri- 
mary unit  of  the  world,  the  single  cause  of  all 
things,  be  something  capable  of  originating 
movement,   directing   it   and   creating  life   and 


ATOM  AND  SPIRIT  51 

mind.  The  principle  of  causality  demands  not 
only  some  cause  for  these  phenomena,  but  a 
sufficient  cause.  Now,  no  material  cause  is 
capable  of  producing  the  phenomena  of  the 
world.  Mind  alone  has  the  power  of  originat- 
ing changes.  Mind  alone  can  be  conceived 
as  producing  mind.  The  effects  cannot  be 
more  precious  and  elevated  than  the  cause. 
The  scientific  laws  of  the  correlation  and  per- 
sistence of  force  imperatively  require  that  the 
highest  term  should  exist  from  the  first.  Force 
can  mount  through  every  stage  of  life  only  by 
being  constantly  impelled  and  renewed  from  a 
fountain  at  least  as  high  as  the  highest  level 
to  which  it  throws  its  waters.  "Materialism," 
as  Papillon,  the  eminent  French  savant,  once 
well  said,  "is  false  and  imperfect  because  it 
stops  short  at  atoms  in  which  it  localizes  those 
properties  for  which  atoms  supply  no  cause. 
And  because  it  neglects  force  and  spirit  which 
are  the  only  means  that  we  have,  constituted 
as  our  souls  are,  of  conceiving  the  activity  and 
the  appearings  of  beings ;  .  .  .  the  source 
of  differentiations  cannot  be  in  energy  itself. 
It  must  be  in  a  principle  apart  from  that 
energy,  in  a  superior  will  and  consciousness,  of 
which  we  have  doubtless  only  a  dim  and  faulty 
idea ;  but  as  to  which  we  can  yet  affirm  that  it 
has  some  analogy  with  the  inner  light  which 
fills  us  and  which  we  shed  forth  from  us." 


52  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

Such  are  the  lofty  inferences  to  which  the 
strictest  philosophic  laws  and  the  most  modern 
scientific  facts  and  investigations  point.  And 
equally  inspiring,  to  the  sensitive  mind,  are  the 
suggestions  of  Nature.  What  else  gives  to  any 
inspiring  landscape  its  inimitable  thrill  except 
this  communion  with  the  Unseen  Sublimity  be- 
hind it? 

"Only  after  celestial  observations,"  Cole- 
ridge somewhere  says,  "can  terrestrial  charts 
be  constructed."  We  can  comprehend  the 
earth  and  the  fascination  of  art,  and  we  can 
understand  the  full  grandeur  of  Nature  only 
when  we  look  at  it  with  the  penetrating  lens  of 
spiritual  vision. 

To  see  in  the  tints  of  closing  day  splendors 
which  jasper  and  beryl  only  faintly  suggest,  we 
must  look  with  a  more  penetrating  gaze  than 
the  eye  of  flesh  and  blood.  To  find  in  the 
blushing  rhodora  assurance  that  "Beauty  is 
its  own  excuse  for  being"  and  in  the  meanest 
flower  that  blows  "thoughts  that  do  often  lie 
too  deep  for  tears,"  we  must  enter  into  that 
higher  mood  of  the  spirit,  wherein  we  may  be- 
come conscious  of  relations  to  an  immaterial 
and  diviner  sphere.  Apart  from  this  the  wood- 
land flower  is  but  a  colored  weed  and  the  most 
glorious  sunset  only  an  ephemeral  play  of 
optic  laws. 

In   one   of  the  noblest  passages   of  Words- 


ATOM  AND  SPIRIT  53 

worth's  "Excursion"  he  describes  in  lines  as  ex- 
alted as  they  are  beautiful  the  reverent  emo- 
tions which  came  to  the  poet  as  a  growing 
youth 

**when  from  the  naked  top 
Of  some  bold  headland,  he  beheld  the  sun 
Rise    up,    and    bathe    the    world    in    light!     He 

looked ; — 
Ocean  and  earth,  the  solid   frame  of  earth 
And  ocean's  liquid  mass,  in  gladness  lay 
Beneath    him.     Far    and    wide    the    clouds    were 

touched 
And  in  their  silent  faces  could  be  read 
Unutterable  love.     Sound  needed  none. 
Nor  any  voice  of  joy;  his  spirit  drank 
The  spectacle. 
In   such   high  hour   of  visitation   from  the  living 

God 
Thought  was  not;  in  enjoyment  it  expired. 
His  mind  was  a  thanksgiving  to  the  power 
That  made  him." 

In  such  an  experience  as  this,  whence  come  this 
beauty,  this  solemnity,  these  divine  suggestions 
that  so  subdue  the  soul?  They  are  not  con- 
tained in  any  of  the  physical  features  of  the 
scene.  On  the  retina  of  the  body  there  are  only 
certain  lines  and  forms  and  splashes  of  color 
— ^just  the  same  on  the  retina  of  the  impassive 
sheep  as  on  the  retina  of  the  entranced  poet 
or  artist. 


54  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

These  heart-moving  sensations  are  only  to  be 
accounted  for  by  the  conviction  that  he  whose 
soul  discerns  these  grander  beauties  and  sub- 
limer  truths  is  not  the  victim  of  delusions, 
but  by  a  certain  spiritual  insight  has  pene- 
trated into  that  rational  order,  into  that  living 
power  and  eternal  grandeur  which  form  the 
genuine  essence  of  all  these  outward  spectacles. 


CHAPTER  IV 
PURPOSE  IN  NATURE 

Wherever  man  has  observed  Nature  care- 
fully, he  has  found  it  full  of  apparent  adapta- 
tions and  ingenious  arrangements,  so  useful, 
so  rational,  so  admirably  shaped  to  accomplish 
certain  ends,  that  they  irresistibly  suggest  to 
the  investigator  that  there  must  have  been  an 
intelligent  purpose  in  their  structure. 

Every  department  of  knowledge  discloses  to 
us  more  or  less  of  these  noticeable  co-ordi- 
nations. In  the  Orchid  family,  how  curious 
are  the  complicated  contrivances  in  certain 
species  which  Charles  Darwin  has  so  well  de- 
scribed, for  securing  the  transportation  of  the 
pollen  from  one  flower  to  another.  To  accom- 
plish this  purpose,  so  necessary  to  the  perpetu- 
ation of  the  species,  baits  of  nectar,  lustrous  by 
day  and  odorous  by  night,  are  provided  to 
tempt  the  moths  to  enter  the  flower.  Then, 
when  they  are  once  within,  there  are  guiding 
ridges  to  compel  the  insect  go-betweens  to  pass 
certain  spots ;  there  are  adhesive  plasters, 
nicely  adjusted  to  catch  their  brows  and  de- 
posit on  them  the  pollen,  and  there  are  even 

hair-triggers,   connected  with   explosive   shells, 

55 


56  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

carefully  set  where  the  insects  must  discharge 
them  and  cause  the  fertilizing  yellow  dust  to  be 
shot  out  upon  the  bodies  of  the  moths  and  thus 
be  carried  across  to  the  pistils  on  the  neighbor- 
ing flowers  that  need  it  to  quicken  and  ripen 
their  seeds. 

Or  think  of  the  wonders  of  the  human  ear 
— that  harp  of  literally  thrice  a  thousand 
strings ;  think  of  the  prospective  contrivances 
for  the  use  of  many  animals  which  are  provided 
long  before  they  are  wanted ;  or  the  eyes  of  the 
child  moulded  in  darkness,  and  the  lungs  fash- 
ioned and  prepared  where  there  is  no  breath  of 
air.  Recall  the  gauze-like  wings  and  thread- 
like antennae  of  the  gnat  folded  in  the  chrysa- 
lis beneath  the  water,  in  readiness  for  the  time 
when  the  mature  creature  shall  mount  into  the 
air  above. 

These  are  but  a  few  out  of  the  thousands  of 
cases  of  marvelous  adaptation  that  Nature  pre- 
sents. I  have  not  space  to  give  even  the 
barest  outline  of  the  multitude  and  wonderful- 
ness  of  these  instances  of  constructive  skill  in 
Nature,  in  comparison  with  which  the  most 
skillful  mechanisms  of  human  ingenuity  are  but 
coarse  and  clumsy  contrivances. 

What  is  the  explanation  and  significance  of 
these  apparent  adaptations  in  Nature? 

A  century  ago,  there  was  but  one  answer  to 
this    question    that    seemed    reasonable.     Paley 


PURPOSE  IN  NATURE  57 

and  the  Natural  Theologians  of  that  day  made 
diligent  catalogues  of  these  natural  con- 
trivances and  founded  upon  them  what  they 
believed  to  be  irrefutable  arguments  for  an  In- 
telligent Creator,  a  Divine  Designer  of  these 
marvels  of  Nature.  The  leaders  of  science 
generally  accepted  this  argument  from  Design. 
But  fifty  years  ago,  with  the  publication  of  the 
Origin  of  Species,  a  great  change  in  the  scien- 
tific attitude  was  initiated. 

In  these  modern  days  the  Universe  has  been 
found  not  to  be  a  structure  or  a  machine  made 
at  first  in  its  present  shape,  as  Paley  supposed, 
but  it  is  a  growth,  "an  evolution."  The  same 
is  true  of  every  living  form  upon  our  earth. 
The  new  born  babe  is  the  culmination  of  a  mil- 
lion previous  steps  and  experiments  by  Nature. 
The  duck  that  toddles  from  its  fresh-broken 
shell  into  the  water  and  strikes  out  as  if  it  were 
an  old  sailor  is  the  embodiment  of  the  experi- 
ence of  a  million  ancestors.  All  the  wonderful 
organs  and  complicated  structures  of  the  vege- 
table and  animal  world  have  arisen  by  suc- 
cessive differentiations  from  previous  forms, 
each  of  them  as  we  go  back,  simpler  and 
simpler. 

This  process  has  resulted  from  a  few  neces- 
sary laws.  Such  are  the  laws  of  heredity, 
variation,  multiplication,  struggle  for  ex- 
istence, or  natural  selection,  the  struggle  for 


58  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

desired  partners,  or  sexual  selection,  and  the 
law  of  vital  adjustment  of  the  plastic  organism 
to  the  pressure  of  the  environment.  The  un- 
avoidable issue  of  these  laws,  it  is  claimed,  is  the 
accumulation  of  every  favorable  variation  in 
animal  life  and  the  consequent  ascent  of  ex- 
istence to  higher  and  higher  degrees  of  per- 
fection, till  the  realm  of  life  (either  by  a  series 
of  happy  accidents  or  as  a  necessary  result) 
has  attained  to  the  present  wonderful  co-ordin- 
ation and  apparently  purposed  adaptation  to 
certain  rational  ends. 

In  view  of  these  laws  and  what  they  have 
done  and  are  doing,  what  justification  is  there 
any  longer  for  that  "Magician  of  Nature" — as 
Strauss  called  the  idea  of  Design — "that  turns 
the  world  topsy-turvy?" 

Professor  Haeckel  hails  Darwin  with  ex- 
ultation "as  the  Newton  of  a  new  era  who  has 
established  the  purposelessness  of  Nature." 

Now  I  freely  admit  at  the  outset  that  the 
Design  argument  has  often  been  stated  in  a 
coarse,  narrow  and  irreverent  way  which  may 
have  deserved  the  sarcastic  phrase,  so  often  ap- 
plied to  It,  of  the  carpenter  theory.  I  freely 
admit  that  the  facts  and  arguments  estab- 
lished by  modern  science  modify  very  ma- 
terially our  view  of  Nature  and  the  manner  in 
which  its  varied  forms  come  Into  existence.  But 
do  they  authorize  us  to  dispense  with  the  idea 


PURPOSE  IN  NATURE  59 

of  purpose?  Do  they  make  the  conception  of 
an  intelligent  Mind,  as  the  most  rational 
source  of  intelligent  adaptations,  an  invalid 
conception? 

Evolution  and  the  discoveries  that  its  keen 
disciples  have  made  bring  out  to  view  in  the 
pedigree  of  every  special  species  or  organ  a 
long  line  of  transitional  forms,  exceedingly  in- 
direct routes  and  a  multitude  of  intermediate 
steps,  through  which  each  organic  form  in 
Nature  at  the  present  day  came  into  existence. 
Neither  eye  nor  ear  nor  foot  was  made  perfect 
at  the  outset.  The  bird's  wing  was  originally 
a  reptillian  leg.  The  arm  of  man  was  for- 
merly used  to  walk  with,  before  our  quadrupedal 
ancestors  tried  to  stand  erect. 

Even  now  the  human  embryo  goes  through 
transformations  that  successively  recall  the 
marine  and  mammal  and  simian  ancestry 
through  which  man  has  ascended  to  his  present 
place  at  the  head  of  living  beings. 

In  the  flounder  the  eyes  start  on  opposite 
sides  of  the  head  and  then  one  passes  across. 
In  the  whale  there  are  rudimentary  teeth  that 
begin  to  form  only  to  be  absorbed ;  and  in  man 
there  is  that  particularly  troublesome  appendix 
that  seems  to  have  no  earthly  use  except  to 
furnish  big  fees  to  the  skillful  surgeon  who 
has  discovered  how  to  cut  It  out  in  safety. 

How  can  such  awkwardnesses  and  imperfec- 


60  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

tions  in  Nature  be  reconciled  with  any  rational 
purpose? 

If  the  world  (as  a  scientific  friend  incisively 
asks  me)  had  a  Creator,  or  its  organic  forms 
were  moulded  into  their  present  shapes  and  con- 
ditions by  a  reasonable  Being,  would  he  begin 
to  make  a  one  toed  horse  by  first  making  a 
five  toed  creature  that  climbed  trees  ?  To  pro- 
duce a  hen,  would  he  start  out  by  making  eggs? 
Or  when  this  Creative  Power  wished  to  make  a 
man,  would  he,  instead  of  aiming  and  working 
directly  toward  the  goal,  begin  at  the  bottom 
of  the  biologic  series  by  making  an  ascidian 
and  then  change  it  into  a  lemurine  creature  or 
some  other  lower  animal  and  then  transform 
that  into  a  simian,  and  so,  by  a  lengthy  circuit, 
develop  the  human  being,  retaining  in  him  nu- 
merous survivals  of  his  past  which  now  are  ap- 
parently quite  useless? 

These  satiric  queries  are  undoubtedly  tell- 
ing. But  do  they  necessarily  compel  us  to  in- 
fer absence  of  purpose,  which  is  the  conclusion 
drawn  by  Professor  Haeckel? 

How  is  it  with  a  large  part  of  the  most 
rationally  planned  human  work?  Does  it  not 
accomplish  its  purpose  by  decidedly  circuitous 
methods?  It  is  notorious  how  the  iron-moulder 
begins  by  making  the  sand  matrix  and  then 
breaks  it  and  throws  it  away.  The  engineer 
who  builds  a  stone  arch,  first  puts  up  the  false 


PURPOSE  IN  NATURE  61 

timber  work  and  then,  when  he  has  got  his 
stones  in  place,  pulls  down  his  first  wooden 
structure.  Shall  we  say  that  the  engineer  and 
the  iron-moulder  have  no  plan?  A  tailor  keeps 
in  his  fashionable  dress  coat  quite  a  number  of 
utterly  useless  features — the  slits  in  the  collar, 
the  division  in  the  tail,  the  buttons  adjacent, 
and  other  useless  features — mere  survivals  of 
the  days  when  that  kind  of  a  coat  was  worn 
out-doors,  the  collar  turned  up  and  a  sword 
projected  behind  from  the  divided  coat-tail. 

In  our  English  language  how  many  silent 
letters  are  there,  of  no  use  whatever  except  as 
historic  monuments  of  the  former  spelling  and 
the  course  of  linguistic  development! 

Shall  we  say  therefore  that  there  is  no  pur- 
pose in  the  work  of  the  tailor  and  printer  and 
that  intelligence  has  had  nothing  to  do  with 
the  evolution  of  language  or  costume?  Is  it 
not  possible  that  the  Intelligence  that  works  in 
Nature  may  have  a  similar  historic  or  esthetic 
sentiment?  Is  it  not  possible  that  the  Divine 
Mind  (like  human  minds)  may  choose  to  make 
circuits  provided  he  can  thereby  accomplish  his 
ends  more  easily? 

But,  it  will  probably  be  urged,  do  not  such 
explanations  and  excuses  imply  a  lack  of  Om- 
nipotence in  God  and  an  absence  of  perfection 
in  his  work  such  as  a  Theist  can  not  admit? 

For  my  part,  I  do  not  see  why  a  Theist  who 


62  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

maintains  that  the  facts  of  Nature  bespeak  in- 
telligence in  their  source  is  obliged  to  main- 
tain, also,  that  Nature  is  as  yet  a  completed 
work  or  that  the  Mind,  immanent  in  our  part 
of  the  cosmos  and  guiding  it,  is  Omniscient. 

While  the  Theist  believes  in  the  existence  of 
a  Supreme  Being,  he  may,  without  incon- 
sistency, suppose  that  the  actual  world-build- 
ing of  our  solar  system  may  have  been  dele- 
gated to  some  subordinate  Divinity,  who, 
though  superhuman  and  wondrously  wise  and 
skillful,  was  not  either  All-wise  or  All-power- 
ful. At  least,  the  thinker  who  has  become  an 
Evolutionist  will,  if  he  is  consistent,  never  re- 
gard that  stage  and  state  of  Nature  in  which 
we  now  live  as  a  finished  result  beyond  which 
there  is  to  be  no  more  progress. 

On  the  contrary,  as  the  Carboniferous  Era 
was  only  an  introductory  stage,  not  to  be 
criticised  as  intended  to  be  complete,  but  to  be 
estimated  rather  in  relation  to  the  higher  de- 
velopments of  life  that  were  to  come  by  and 
by,  so  even  our  present  cosmic  epoch  should 
properly  be  regarded  as  a  transitional  stage 
whose  whole  significance  is  only  to  be  under- 
stood later  on,  when  the  Divine  Power  has  more 
nearly  finished  his  work.  As  a  transitional 
stage  of  life,  of  course,  it  has  its  imperfections. 
But  these  do  not  show  an  absence  of  all  Divine 
Purpose.     The   scaffoldings   and  chips   around 


PURPOSE  IN  NATURE  63 

a  half-built  Cathedral  are,  of  course,  some- 
what confusing  and  disappointing.  But  how- 
ever meaningless  to  the  careless  eye,  they  do 
not  demonstrate  that  there  was  no  mind  or 
purpose  in  its  building.  Wait  till  it  is  finished, 
and  then  judge.  The  cosmic  Architect  works 
still  more  slowly  and  patiently,  and  perhaps 
will  reveal  in  the  end  a  still  more  impressive 
design.  It  is  too  early,  to-day,  to  judge  it  by 
its  scaffoldings.  That  would  be  a  sufficient  an- 
swer to  the  critics  of  Theism. 

But  if  it  does  not  satisfy  you,  try  the  other 
alternative.  Suppose  that  the  Wisdom  guid- 
ing Nature  is  perfect.  Then  is  it  not  just 
possible  that  it  is  due  to  our  finite  ignorance 
and  limited  understanding  that  we  do  not  com- 
prehend his  vast  and  subtle  purposes.'' 

I  think  so.  The  Evolutionists  have  shown 
that  the  wing  of  the  bat  was  not  made  at  once 
and  was  not  made  simply  for  that  use  in  flying 
which  it  now  fulfills.  But  if  we  suppose  (as 
we  do,  on  this  alternative)  that  the  Divine 
Wisdom  is  perfect,  why  may  not  such  a  limit- 
less Mind  have  intended  that  the  original  or- 
gan should  develop  into  all  the  forms  it  has 
assumed  and  should  fulfill  all  the  uses  which  it 
has  actually  served.  An  Intelligence  that  is 
infinite,  it  is  reasonable  to  suppose,  could  and 
would  have  included  in  his  plan,  not  merely  the 
present    functions    and   services   of  the   animal 


64  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

organ,  but  all  functions  and  services  which  it 
has  been  put  to  in  the  past  or  may  be  adapted 
to  in  the  future.  The  plasticity  of  the  organ, 
so  far  from  being  a  quality  requiring  no  wis- 
dom to  account  for  it,  requires,  on  the  con- 
trary, immensely  more  explanation  than  any 
present  structure. 

As  to  the  alleged  uselessness  and  absence  of 
purpose  in  the  various  relics  of  past  develop- 
ment found  in  many  organisms,  might  not  our 
men  of  science,  without  too  great  a  strain  on 
their  imagination,  see  several  very  serviceable 
purposes  which  might  justify  them  to  a  reason- 
ing mind?  When  a  savant  quotes,  as  he  is  so 
fond  of  doing,  Kepler's  great  saying  "0  God 
I  think  thy  thoughts  after  thee,"  might  he  not 
turn  to  these  very  relics  of  the  past  course  of 
the  development  of  life  and  discover  in  them  the 
precious  sources  of  instruction  to  man  as  to  his 
own  history  and  God's  method  of  creation? 
They  are  conditions  and  aids  to  human  educa- 
tion and  the  understanding  of  God's  laws,  and, 
therefore,  of  inestimable  value  in  that  which  is 
the  great  end  of  life,  the  development  of  the 
soul. 

Moreover,  they  are  necessary  incidents  of  the 
government  by  general  laws  which  reason 
everywhere  adopts. 

If  in  civilized  states  government  has 
found    it    wise    to    supersede    the    special    fiats 


PURPOSE  IN  NATURE  65 

of  barbaric  rulers  by  a  system  of  laws 
strictly  general,  surely,  the  observation  of  a 
similar  system  in  Nature  demonstrates,  not  an 
absence  of  intelligence  there,  but  rather  the 
presence  of  that  higher  order  of  reason  to 
which  man  has  only  of  late  attained. 

The  discoveries  of  modern  science  have  indeed 
shown  that  every  well-adapted  organ  became 
adapted  by  certain  anterior  means  and  methods, 
by  a  certain  variability,  heredity,  sexual  in- 
stinct, environing  influence  and  gradual  ac- 
cumulation of  advantages  gained  by  the  suc- 
cessive generations  in  the  struggle  for  life. 

The  method  of  producing  animals  supposed 
by  Paley  and  that  which  the  Evolution  theory 
supposes  may  be  compared  to  the  old  and  new 
methods  of  manufacturing. 

In  primitive  times  when  a  pin  or  a  needle  was 
made,  one  man  made  personally  every  part  of 
it.  He  gathered  the  ore  himself,  melted  it  in 
the  fire,  hammered  the  lump  of  metal  with  his 
own  hand,  and  rubbed  and  smoothed  it  till  it 
was  fashioned  into  the  final  shape  desired. 

Now-a-days  it  is  made  in  no  such  simple  and 
direct  a  way  as  this.  Instead  of  one  maker  we 
find  scores — perhaps  hundreds — concerned  in  its 
production.  Gang  after  gang  of  men,  machine 
after  machine,  successively  put  their  one  or  two 
little  touches  to  it  and  pass  it  on.  One  band  of 
workmen  mine  the  metal ;  another  band  trans- 


66  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

port  it;  a  third  smelt  it;  a  fourth  cast  it  into 
a  large  lump.  Then  one  machine  moulds  it  into 
bars,  another  rolls  it  into  rods,  a  third  stretches 
these  into  wires,  a  fourth  cuts  these  into 
lengths,  a  fifth  sharpens  and  points  each 
length,  a  sixth  contrivance  heads  it,  a  seventh 
polishes  it,  an  eighth  shakes  out  every  deformed 
or  imperfect  pin.  At  last  the  completed  pin 
is  produced. 

The  two  ways  are  certainly  very  different. 
But  because  of  this  difference,  the  numerous 
steps  concerned  in  the  development  of  the 
pin  and  the  many  transitional  forms  that  it 
takes  on  the  way,  must  we  say  that  nothing 
planned  the  pin,  that  mind  had  nothing  to  do 
with  its  present  shape,  that  there  were  only 
certain  mechanical  forces  that  rolled  it  and 
pulled  it  and  pointed  it  and  shook  out  of  the 
hopper  everything  that  was  not  a  perfect  pin? 

Such  an  inference  would  be  absurd.  And 
similarly  in  regard  to  the  bearing  of  the  discov- 
eries of  the  Evolutionists  in  the  Theistic  debate. 
Believing  as  I  do  in  these  evolutionary  methods 
and  laws  as  well  established — nevertheless,  what 
inconsistency  is  there  between  them  and  the 
supposition  of  a  Superintending  Mind  that 
through  them  effects  its  purposes? 

The  purpose,  the  useful  end,  comes  out  at 
last  most  clearly.  To  argue  that  because  we 
have  found  out  the  natural  steps  by  which  this 


PURPOSE  IN  NATURE  67 

purpose  was  accomplished,  therefore  it  could 
not  have  been  intended  by  any  one,  is  an  in- 
ference quite  uncalled  for. 

It  would  be  like  saying  of  our  pins,  we  have 
found  out  that  they  are  made  by  ingenious  ma- 
chinery ;  consequently  no  intelligent  cause  had 
anything  to  do  with  them.  If  the  machinery 
makes  the  pins,  what  made  the  machinery? 

Take  this  plastic  power  of  the  life-force,  by 
use  and  effort,  in  opposition  to  physical  condi- 
tions, to  achieve  its  desired  ends,  and  to  grow 
stronger  and  more  finely  moulded,  the  greater 
be  the  demands  made  upon  it — how  much  more 
imperative  is  this,  in  its  demand  of  a  Higher 
Cause,  than  is  the  claim  of  any  secondary  cause 
which  matter  and  its  laws  supply. 

Take  the  variability  of  the  organism  and  its 
amazing  capacity  of  self- adjustment  to  the  new 
conditions  of  sea  or  land  or  air  and  its  power 
to  hand  down  by  heredity  a  better  body  to  its 
offspring — who  or  what  made  this  wonderful 
variability?  What  more  eloquent  of  intelli- 
gent prevision  than  these  grand  laws? 

Or  analyze  the  proposed  explanations  of 
beauty  and  ornament,  drawn  from  Sexual  Se- 
lection. On  what  else  do  they  all  lean  than 
upon  a  most  curious  esthetic  susceptibility  in 
all  animals  (for  which  the  laws  of  matter  sup- 
ply no  account,  and  of  which  life  has  no  abso- 
lute   need),    a    susceptibility    which    suggests 


68  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

rather  the  beneficence  of  that  Gracious  Power 
who  delights  in  making  his  creatures  happy? 

If  the  various  laws  that  we  sum  up  under 
the  name  "evolution"  have  made  the  eye  and 
the  ear,  then  we  are  not  excused  from  looking 
further  back,  but,  on  the  contrary,  we  are  at 
once  called  to  look  further  back.  Who  or  what 
constituted  these  laws  of  evolution?  None  of 
them  are  efficient  forces  or  ultimate  causes. 

They  are  only  abstract  terms  for  certain 
regular  events.  One  of  the  old  jests  is  the  ex- 
planation which  Martinus  Scriblerus  gave  for 
the  operation  of  the  meat  jack.  It  was  due,  he 
said,  to  "its  inherent  meat-roasting  power." 

He  who  ascribes  all  the  results  of  evolution 
to  the  evolutionary  law  commits  an  equally 
foolish  blunder.  The  fact  that  there  is  an  evo- 
lutionary order  and  method  does  not  refute  the 
existence  of  a  Power  acting  through  that  or- 
der.    On  the  contrary,  it  implies  it. 

Moreover  to  assume  that,  because  it  operates 
by  general  laws,  it  must  be  something  else  than 
a  Divine  Mind  is  an  equally  uncalled-for  infer- 
ence. Must  Omniscience  be  necessarily  capri- 
cious and  scorn  natural  chains  of  cause  and 
effect?  Is  there  any  compelling  reason  why 
the  Creator  should  be  supposed  (on  every  oc- 
casion that  he  moulds  a  creature  or  an  organ) 
to  start  in  the  clay-pit,  at  the  bottom  of  the 
ladder  of  life,  instead  of  taking  advantage  of 


PURPOSE  IN  NATURE  69 

his  previous  work  as  a  scaffold  on  which  to 
build  higher?  Is  it  irrational  to  think  of  the 
Divine  Mind  accomplishing  its  ends  by  the 
skillful  combinations  of  regular  laws  and 
forces,  using  the  foundations  of  his  earlier 
work? 

On  the  contrary,  wherever  reason  rises 
highest,  that  is  just  the  way  reason  manages. 
And  if  that  is  the  method  of  the  wise  man,  why 
not  of  the  All-Wise  Mind  that  governs  the  Uni- 
verse ? 

I  know  well  enough  the  subtle  objection 
made  by  scientific  critics,  that  Purpose  and  De- 
sign are  human  methods,  anthropomorphic  con- 
ceptions which  we  are  not  justified  in  attribut- 
ing to  Nature  because  we  do  not  know  in  ad- 
vance that  Nature  has  any  mind,  or  if  it  has, 
whether  it  is  a  conscious  mind  or  an  uncon- 
scious intelligence. 

I  reply — if  these  objections  demolish  the 
proof  of  "Purpose  in  Nature,"  they  demolish  a 
great  part  of  modern  science.  They  would 
discredit  Archeolog}^  Egyptology  and  Assyri- 
ology.  What  do  we  know  of  the  mind  of  pre- 
historic peoples  except  by  the  intelligent  char- 
acter of  their  work,  the  tools,  the  pottery,  the 
hieroglyphics  they  have  left? 

These  over-subtle  objections  are  inconsistent 
with  the  daily  practice  and  working  principles 
of  all  our  leading  scientific  investigators,  and 


70  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

they  would  overthrow  all  their  results,  if  they 
are  valid  objections. 

What  is  the  principle  of  investigation  used 
by  Prof.  Wallace  in  his  proof  of  the  intelli- 
gence (superior  to  blind  instinct)  used  by  birds 
in  the  construction  of  their  nests ;  or  by  Sir 
John  Lubbock  in  his  demonstrations  of  the 
high  intelligence  shown  by  ants ;  or  by  Binet 
in  his  famous  researches  on  the  Psychic  Life 
of  Micro-Organisms,  from  which  he  concludes 
that  they  have  sentience  and  probably  a  meas- 
ure of  choice  and  effort? 

Do  they  not  all  have  for  their  principle  of 
investigation  and  proof  that  the  use  of  intelli- 
gent means  to  accomplish  intelligent  ends  be- 
speaks intelligent  purpose? 

Well,  then.  If  the  hole  drilled  through  a 
prehistoric  bone-needle,  as  an  eye  for  the 
thread,  is  claimed  by  the  scientist  to  bespeak 
an  intelligent  intent  and  intelligent  maker  of 
the  needle,  by  what  logic  is  the  similar  hole 
drilled  through  the  nasal-bone  for  the  escape 
of  the  tear  from  the  eye  held  to  disclose  no  in- 
tention in  the  Author  of  Nature? 

If  the  rational  character  of  the  cuneiform 
inscriptions,  impressed  on  Nineveh  tablets,  as- 
sures the  Assyriologist  of  the  rational  purpose 
and  mind  of  their  makers,  why  should  not  the 
symmetrical  and  subtle  mathematic  series,  pro- 
ceeding according  to  a  profoundly  rational  law 


PURPOSE  IN  NATURE  71 

that  governs  at  once  both  the  branching  and 
leaf-arrangement  of  plants  and  the  orbits  of 
planets,  supply  some  indication  of  a  planful 
Mind  in  their  Creator? 

The  only  consistent  view  is  that  facts  speak 
for  themselves ;  and  as,  in  scientific  research, 
savants  daily  do  infer  and  have  to  infer  (if 
they  would  discover  anything)  that  useful- 
working  combinations  of  means  to  ends  imply 
purpose,  so  in  Nature  and  theological  research, 
also,  they  imply  purpose. 

As  one  who  was  for  many  years  a  foremost 
leader  in  science  and  an  early  adopter  and  able 
expositor  of  the  theory  of  evolution  has  said: 
"A  strange  contradiction  would  it  be  to  insist 
that  the  shape  and  markings  of  certain  rude 
pieces  of  flint,  lately  found  in  drift  deposits, 
prove  design,  but  that  nicer  and  thousandfold 
more  complex  adaptations  to  use,  in  animals 
and  vegetables,  do  not  'a  fortiori'  argue  de- 
sign." * 

The  distinguished  naturalist.  Prof.  Bunge, 
says :  "The  more  thoroughly  and  conscien- 
tiously we  endeavor  to  study  biological  prob- 
lems, the  more  are  we  convinced  that  even  those 
processes  which  we  have  already  regarded  as 
explicable  by  chemical  and  physical  laws  are  in 
reality  infinitely  more  complex  and  at  present 
defy  any  attempt  at  mechanical  explanation." 

*  (Prof.  Asa  Gray,  pp.  152)  "Darwiniana." 


72  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

What  has  enabled  Science  to  penetrate  the 
secrets  of  Nature?  What  else  but  the  fact 
that  Nature  was  not  irrational  but  a  rational 
system.  And  as  it  is  a  rational  system  it  must 
be  the  manifestation  of  Reason,  the  work  of  a 
purposing  Mind.  Intelligibility  in  the  effect 
implies  Intelligence  in  the  cause. 

The  further  Science  penetrates  into  the 
secrets  of  the  Universe  the  more  regular  seems 
the  march  of  thought  presented  there. 

The  eminent  physiologist,  Oscar  Hertwig, 
has  not  only  pointed  out  the  insufficiency  of 
physical  and  chemical  energies  to  explain  the 
vital  properties  of  the  cell,  but  he  maintains 
that  the  facts  indicate  something  that  looks 
like  intelligent  action.  "The  nature-process 
resembles  a  process  of  thought."  * 

In  the  leading  orders  and  species  of  living 
creatures  there  are  found  certain  ideal  types 
characteristic  of  each,  variously  modified  but 
never  forgotten.  Prof.  W.  B.  Carpenter,  in 
tracing  the  life  history  of  the  Orbitolites,  a 
highly  specialized  species  of  Foramlniferse,  says 
"it  seems  to  me  impossible  not  to  recognize 
the  fact  that  the  evolution  of  this  type  has 
taken  place  along  a  definite  course,  every  stage 
being  one  of  progress,  and  each  being,  so  to 
speak,  a  preparation  for  the  next."  And  Nat- 
ural Selection,  he  affirms,  "gives  no  account  of 
*  Die  Zelle  und  die  Gewebe:  p.  259. 


PURPOSE  IN  NATURE  73 

the  changes  in  the  plan  of  growth  which  car- 
ried the  Orbitolites  forward,  evolving  steadily 
calcareous   fabrics  of  ever-increasing  complex- 

ity." 

Again  in  the  evolution  of  the  respiratory 
apparatus  from  the  swimming  bladder  of  the 
fish  to  the  lung  of  the  mammal,  Prof.  Carpen- 
ter finds  it  undergoing  a  uniformly  progres- 
sive elevation  of  type,  which  he  regards  as 
showing  a  preordained  plan.  "The  doctrine 
of  Natural  Selection,"  he  affirms,  "fails  to  ac- 
count for  that  general  consistency  of  the  ad- 
vance along  definite  lines  of  progress,  which  is 
manifested  in  the  history  of  Evolution."  * 

These  cases  that  I  have  mentioned  are  only 
two  out  of  many. 

In  the  striking  instance  of  the  electric  or- 
gans of  the  skate,  even  Prof.  Romanes  was 
obliged  to  admit  that  the  facts  of  the  case 
"assuredly  do  appear  to  sanction  the  doctrine 
of  prophetic  germs."  The  electric  battery  in 
the  skate,  although  now  so  feeble  as  to  be  of 
little  practical  use  for  defence  to  its  owner, 
does  seem  to  be  on  its  way  towards  becoming 
such  an  organ  as  the  electric  batteries  in  the 
Gymnotus  and  the  Torpedo  fish.  And  accord- 
ingly Prof.  Romanes  admitted  that  "the  facts 
do  present  a  serious  difficulty  to  the  theory  of 
Natural  Selection,  while  they  readily  lend 
Nature  and  Man,"  p.  463. 


*  «i 


74  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

themselves  to  the  interpretation  of  a  disposing 
or  foreordaining  Mind  that  knows  how  to  con- 
struct a  battery  by  thus  transforming  muscu- 
lar tissue  into  electric  tissue." 

Note  another  significant  thing.  The  course 
of  Nature  has  been  found  to  be  not  an  aimless, 
fruitless  motion,  alternately  rising  and  falling, 
or  moving  round  and  round  in  unprogressive 
circles.  It  is,  in  scientific  phrase,  an  evolution, 
i.  e.,  a  progress.  And  if  often  a  natural  series 
seems  to  return  to  its  point  of  beginning,  we 
find  on  examination  that  it  is  on  a  more  ele- 
vated plane.  The  path  is  a  spiral,  moving 
steadily  higher  and  higher.  If  occasionally 
there  is  degeneration,  on  the  whole  the  course 
of  Nature  is  steadily  upward,  toward  higher 
types — i.  e.,  organisms  more  and  more  infused 
with  mind,  the  material  forms  increasingly 
saturated  with  spirit. 

Now,  this  upward  course  of  Nature  can  only 
be  explained  by  a  Divine  Purpose.  Utility  in 
the  struggle  for  existence  does  not  explain  it. 
For  to  an  earthworm  or  an  oyster,  the  struc- 
ture of  the  vertebrate  is  of  no  advantage. 
Accident  does  not  explain  this  progress. 
Chance  pulls  in  every  way — not  steadily  up- 
ward. Chance  pulls  down  quite  as  often  as  it 
builds  up.  Chance  writes  no  such  intelligent 
dramas,  going  upward  from  all  beginnings  in 
orderly  crescendoes  to  rational  climaxes. 


PURPOSE  IN  NATURE  75 

How  the  one  Power  of  the  Universe  should 
have  pursued  the  path  of  evolution,  moving 
steadily  from  molecule  up  to  monad,  and  from 
monad  to  mammal  and  from  mammal  up  to 
man,  from  the  non-living  to  the  living  and 
from  the  apparently  unconscious  to  the  con- 
scious, for  millions  of  years,  unless  from 
beginning  to  end  the  process  was  dominated 
by  a  Purpose  and  by  the  Intelligence  that 
alone  has  purposes,  this  is  inconceivable. 

The  reasonable  mind  must  recognize  that  the 
history  of  evolution  is  that  of  a  consistent  ad- 
vance along  definite  lines  of  progress  and  can 
only  be  explained  as  the  work  of  a  Mind  in 
Nature.  Is  there  any  way  of  escaping  this 
obvious  conclusion?  The  only  way  that  has 
been  suggested  is  to  refer  these  harmonies  of 
Nature  back  to  the  original  regularity  of  the 
atoms  or  the  electrons.  As  drops  of  frozen 
moisture  on  the  window  pane,  build  up  the 
symmetrical  frost  forms,  without  design,  by 
virtue  of  the  original  similarity  of  the  com- 
ponent parts,  so  do  the  similar  atoms  or  elec- 
trons without  plan  or  purpose  build  up  the 
harmonious  forms  of  Nature. 

But  this  explanation  confronts  the  thinker 
with  a  still  more  significant  objection. 

Why  are  the  atoms  or  electrons  thus  regular 
and  similar  .P  Here  are  millions  on  millions  of 
atoms   of  gold  just  alike.     Here   are  millions 


76  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

on  millions  of  atoms  of  oxygen, — each  with 
substantially  the  same  weight,  size,  velocity 
of  vibration  and  chemical  qualities,  so  that 
we  can  take  out  one  billion  of  them  from  a 
chemic  compound  and  put  back  another  bil- 
lion and  they  combine  and  behave  in  the  same 
way. 

Again,  all  the  trillions  on  trillions  of  atoms 
on  the  earth  are  not  of  infinitely  varied  shape, 
weight,  size  and  chemic  quality.  But  there  are 
only  seventy  kinds  (or  less)  of  atoms;  and  all 
the  myriads  in  one  chemic  species  are  sub- 
stantially alike — so  that  each  successive  atom 
of  oxygen  that  comes  to  a  burning  flame  does 
the  same  work  and  behaves  just  like  its  pred- 
ecessor and  its  successor. 

Plow  can  this  marvelous  identity  of  the 
atoms  be  explained?  Certainly  not  by  chance 
nor  struggle  for  existence.  Among  the  atoms 
there  is  no  heredity,  no  vital  competition,  no 
natural  selection  nor  sexual  selection  to  ac- 
count for  this.  Those  two  great  scientific 
thinkers  of  the  last  generation.  Sir  John 
Herschel  and  Clark  Maxwell,  after  long  pon- 
dering on  these  curious  facts,  declared  that  the 
only  reasonable  solution  was  that  the  atoms 
were  marked  by  the  essential  characters  at 
once  of  manufactured  articles  and  of  subordi- 
nate agents. 

The  latest  scientific  discoveries  give  a  differ- 


PURPOSE  IN  NATURE  77 

ent  but  no  less  significant  answer.  The  bril- 
liant and  epoch-making  work  of  Prof.  J.  J. 
Thomson  and  his  co-laborers  refer  back  this 
regularity  of  the  atoms  and  their  chemical 
qualities  to  the  still  smaller  corpuscles  or  elec- 
trons (each  carrying  its  characteristic  electric 
charge),  of  which  each  atom  is  composed;  and 
it  is  thought  that  the  primitive  types  of  the 
elemental  substances  may  be  less  than  half  a 
dozen.  It  is  from  these  few  primitive  types  of 
ethers  and  electrons,  corpuscles  and  atoms,  with 
their  original  potentialities,  compounded  and  re- 
compounded  into  more  and  more  complex  com- 
binations by  a  few  regular  laws  and  forces,  that 
the  universe  has  grown  up  from  the  primal 
nebula  or  ether  ocean  into  our  present  world. 

But  in  the  light  of  this  wonderful  simplifica- 
tion of  the  elements,  with  which  the  cosmos 
started,  is  not  the  argument  for  a  Planful  Mind, 
indwelling  in  the  world  and  directing  and  push- 
ing on  its  development,  stronger  than  ever? 

Who  or  what  organized  this  marvelous  cos- 
mic embryo,  with  its  co-ordinated  elements  and 
latent  forces,  skillfully  adjusted  so  as  to  de- 
velop into  our  Universe?  The  agency  of  Mind 
and  Purpose  in  Nature  is  not  dispensed  with.' 
It  is  only  pushed  further  back,  or  rather, 
farther  in.  It  is  shifted  from  the  particular  to 
the  general,  from  the  special  structure  to  the 
laws    and    atoms,    ethers    and    electrons    that 


78  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

formed  the  primal  cosmic  cell  and  vital 
nucleus  of  all.  It  is  driven  inwards  from  the 
assumed  outside  Mechanician  (occasionally  or 
originally  active)  to  the  "interior  Artist,"  the* 
indwelling  Life  and  Mind  constantly  quicken- 
ing and  moulding  from  within  all  parts  of 
Nature,  to  whom  logical  thought  must  ulti- 
mately come. 

The  question  recurs :  "Whence  came  this 
primitive  tuning  of  electrons  and  atoms 
to  rational  laws?  Whence  came  this  har- 
monious adjustment  of  plastic  life  to  chang-. 
ing  conditions,  this  ordering  of  the  myriad 
forces  of  Nature  into  one  column,  moving  stead- 
ily toward  a  single  objective,  the  development 
of  conscious  life  in  the  cosmos?" 

This  superb  symphony  of  Nature  implies  a 
"Tone-Master"  as  its  cause.  It  implies  an 
ever-ruling  Purpose  and  Superintending  Mind 
even  more  strongly  than  the  most  ingenious 
structure  of  eye  or  ear  does. 

As  Prof.  Huxley  was  forced  to  admit, — 
"The  more  purely  a  mechanist  the  speculator 
is  and  the  more  firmly  he  assumes  a  primordial 
molecular  arrangement,  of  which  all  the  phe- 
nomena of  the  Universe  are  consequences,  then, 
the  more  completely  is  the  thinker  at  the  mercy 
of  the  advocate  of  Design  in  Nature,  who  can 
always  defy  him  to  prove  that  this  molecular 
arrangement   was    not    intended   to    evolve   the 


PURPOSE  IN  NATURE  79 

phenomena  that  has  been  evolved  in  the  Uni- 
verse." 

Certainly,  the  original  arrangement  of  the 
atoms  of  the  Universe  might  have  had  any  one 
of  an  infinite  num^ber  of  original  dispositions. 
Every  different  original  arrangement  of  the 
atoms  would  have  produced  a  different  Uni- 
verse corresponding  thereto.  That  out  of  this 
myriad  of  possible  primitive  arrangements  of 
the  atoms  and  possible  universes  just  this  par- 
ticular atomic  structure  and  arrangement  was 
chosen  which,  in  its  gradual  and  necessary  un- 
folding, would  work  out  the  present  admirable 
world  which  we  see — what  a  marvelous  fore- 
thought and  amazing  wisdom  of  purpose  was 
needed  for  this ! 

What  a  Supreme  Reason  and  far-reaching 
Purpose  that  could  marshal  this  countless  host 
of  electrons  and  atoms  and  this  infinitely  com- 
plex system  of  interwoven  laws  and  appropriate 
faculties  and  capacities,  and  march  them 
through  the  immensities  of  space  and  down  the 
measureless  vistas  of  time  straight  to  their 
goal  in  the  grand  world  climax  of  to-day ! 
Verily,  Omniscience  alone  is  equal  to  such  a 
marvelous    consummation. 

Nature  can  not  give  what  it  does  not  possess 
itself.  Unless  there  be  reason  in  the  source 
of  Life,  reason  could  never  evolve  in  the  scien- 
tific student  of  life.     No  law  can  unfold  in  the 


80  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

upper  planes  of  life  that  which  was  not  in- 
folded in  the  lower  planes.  Evolution  has 
shown  the  mental  and  spiritual  in  man  to  be  a 
normal  product,  an  integral  part  of  the  Cosmic 
Life.  Its  manifestation  in  humanity  implies  its 
presence  throughout  the  Whole.  Human  con- 
sciousness is  the  one  place  where  we  get  an 
inside  view  of  the  Reality  of  things.  The  only 
things  we  do  not  infer,  but  directly  know,  are 
'our  own  sensations,  will  and  thoughts.  As  the 
one  part  of  the  cosmos  that  we  directly  know 
is  conscious  life,  therefore  logic  and  analogy 
justify  us  in  assuming  that  the  rest  of  the 
cosmos,  the  grand  organism  of  the  universe, 
is  also  (at  least  on  its  superior  side)  a  Con- 
scious Life,  and  like  other  conscious  life  thinks 
and  acts  with  purpose. 

As  we  watch  the  Universe  from  the  outside 
it  may  seem  all  mechanics  and  material  instru- 
mentality. But  as,  with  the  eye  of  philosophic 
reason,  we  look  within,  we  see  that  there  is 
everywhere  attendant  Mind  and  directing  Will. 
The  laws  of  Nature  are  but  the  habits  of  that 
Divine  Will ;  species  and  races  and  the  decay 
and  birth  of  worlds  are  the  projections  of 
God's  thought  on  the  screen  of  space,  as  he 
silently  initiates,  quickens  and  superintends  all 
in  accordance  with  his  eternal  plans. 

In  obedience  to  his  tyrannical  bias  by  "the 
things    seen"    the   materialist   tells   the   Theist 


PURPOSE  IN  NATURE  81 

that  he  has  no  right  to  believe  in  such  a  thing 
as  cosmic  purpose  and  thought  until  the  theist 
can  show  the  materialist  a  titan  brain  some- 
where in  the  stellar  universe. 

It  is  a  subtle  argument,  which  to  some  seems 
invincible.  But  may  not  the  believer  in  God 
with  still  greater  cogency  reply  (as  Martineau 
has  so  well  retorted)  :  "Lift  up  your  eyes  to  the 
arch  of  night  and  look  upon  the  shining  firma- 
ment as  the  brow  of  the  Eternal.  See  in  the 
wheeling  suns  of  the  celestial  galaxies,  the  vi- 
brating atoms  of  some  infinite  cerebral  circuit. 
See  in  its  constellations  the  molecules  and  brain 
cells  of  the  universal  consciousness."  Yes. 
The  theist  may  with  entire  legitimacy  recog- 
nize in  its  ether  waves  the  subtle  currents  of 
the  Omniscient  Thought;  and  behold  in  the 
great  drama  of  Evolution  the  gradual  unroll- 
ing of  some  scant  portion  of  the  "Autobi- 
ography of  the  Eternal  Spirit"  on  the  great 
stage  of  infinite  Space — that  eternal  Spirit  in 
whose  history  a  thousand  years  are  as  one  day, 
and  nebula  and  galaxies  are  but  evanescent 
sparkles  of  his  Living  Robe.  This  garment  in 
itself  has  no  original  or  independent  power.  It 
is  only  to  the  outward  eye  that  it  seems  so.  To 
the  inward  eye  it  is  the  pulsing  blood  and  flesh 
of  that  Infinite  Life  who  moves  and  breathes 
in  all  things  that  have  the  semblance  of  reality. 


CHAPTER  V 
LAW  AND  PROVIDENCE 

One  of  the  most  difficult  of  all  questions, 
but  also  one  of  the  most  important  and  far- 
reaching,  is  that  which  concerns  the  methods  by 
which  the  government  of  the  universe  is  carried 
on.  Does  it  move  by  law  or  by  love?  Is  the 
course  of  Nature  invariable,  or  is  it  from  time 
to  time  miraculously  modified?  General  or 
special  action,  immutability  or  mercy,  physical 
fatalism  or  Providential  privilege — which  is  the 
block  in  this  ancient  puzzle  that  we  must  put 
in  the  center  to  supply  us  with  a  solution? 

The  common  solutions  are  two — the  method 
of  science  and  that  of  generally  accepted  dog- 
matic faith. 

Dogmatic  faith  takes  the  grace  and  special 
Providence  of  God  and  ignores  law  and  invari- 
able order.  Science  adopts  natural  law  and 
the  unchanging  connections  of  the  physical 
energies  and  processes  and  ignores  Divine  voli- 
tion and  good-will. 

Dogmatic  faith  says:  God  is  good  and 
comes  again  and  again  to  help  forward  his 
creation  in  its  onward  progress.     He  comes  in 

with    his    creative    power    and    introduces    new 

82 


LAW  AND  PROVIDENCE  83 

species  and  new  revelations.  When  evils  ap- 
pear in  the  world  he  personally  rectifies  them 
and  punishes  their  authors.  He  cuts  short  the 
wicked  in  their  sins.  He  saves  the  virtuous 
from  the  pitfalls  of  wicked  foes.  He  takes  pos- 
session of  the  faculties  of  chosen  men  to  im- 
part to  the  people  his  revealed  will.  He  inter- 
rupts the  laws  of  disease,  gravitation,  birth  and 
death  to  bring  a  favored  nation  safely  out  of 
captivity  and  convince  the  world  of  the  author- 
ity of  certain  chosen  messengers.  He  sends  an 
earthquake  to  engulf  a  Sodom,  or  a  special  calm 
to  save  the  sinking  boat  of  the  holy.  If  a  saint 
prays  to  him  the  Lord  will  arrest,  till  the 
saint  passes  by,  the  avalanche  that  is  about  to 
overwhelm  him. 

Directly  opposed  to  this  orthodox  theory  of 
the  Divine  Government  is  that  which  science  ad- 
vocates. According  to  the  teaching  of  nat- 
ural knowledge,  physical  forces  determine 
everything,  and  those  forces  are  always  the 
same ;  they  act  in  the  same  way  and  produce 
similar  results  whenever  the  conditions  are  the 
same.  There  is — there  can  be — no  chance  nor 
miracle.  What  we  fancy  to  be  such  things  are 
merely  those  events  that  are  so  complex  that 
we  have  not  as  yet  discovered  their  regular 
antecedents  and  conditions.  The  making  of 
the  world  and  its  inhabitants,  the  origin  of 
species,    the    course    of    history,    the    life    and 


84  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

thoughts  of  each  individual — all  are  but  neces- 
sary, gradual,  unguided  evolutions  of  the  un- 
conscious primal  energies  of  the  universe,  ac- 
cording to  the  same  inflexible  natural  order 
that  is  now  in  operation.  Crystals,  cells, 
nerves,  mammals  and  men  have  all  developed 
from  primal  chemical  materials  and  combina- 
tions and  have  differentiated  themselves  spon- 
taneously by  the  necessary  laws  of  Nature. 
There  are  no  interventions  or  corrections  in 
that  august  system  to  remedy  any  disorders  or 
keep  them  from  bearing  severely  on  particular 
individuals.  The  great  order  of  the  cosmos 
has  no  tenderness  for  childhood,  no  pity  for 
virtue,  no  regard  for  the  most  pathetic  pray- 
ers. It  never  swerves  from  the  path  that  force 
and  circumstance  prescribe. 

Such  are  the  two  opposite  answers.  Which 
«f  these  methods  shall  we  accept  as  the  real 
course  of  action  in  the  universe.'^  Shall  we  be- 
lieve that  the  latter  method  of  cosmic  gov- 
ernment prevails,  viz.,  that  of  invariable  nat- 
ural law  and  the  rule  of  blind,  unconscious 
force  ? 

Against  this,  as  a  full  and  sufficient  explana- 
tion, the  heart  of  man  protests,  as  a  theory  that 
gives  us  only  a  gigantic  glacier  of  unfeeling 
force  which  with  icy  rigors  would  freeze  the 
very  knees  that  kneel  before  it. 

Of  those   who   hold   to   this   strict   scientific 


LAW  AND  PROVIDENCE  85 

interpretation  of  the  processes  of  the  cosmos, 
there  are  two  classes.  One  class  would  sup- 
pose, in  company  with  such  eminent  men  of 
science  as  the  late  Charles  Darwin  and  Clark 
Maxwell,  that  the  first  constitution  of  the 
atoms  and  their  properties,  the  first  living  cells 
and  the  chief  primal  forms  of  life  were  due 
to  special  acts  of  creation  on  the  part  of  the 
Supreme;  but  that  after  the  universe  was  once 
organized  and  started  on  its  way  it  has  been 
left  to  go  on  evolving  itself  without  the  least 
interruption  by  further  supernatural  inter- 
vention. 

Now,  this  theory  of  a  Creator  who  at 
first  spends  infinite  care  and  skill  in  equip- 
ping and  launching  the  grand  cosmic  steam- 
ship with  its  marvelous  machinery,  but  who 
thereafter  takes  no  more  thought  about  it, 
seems  somewhat  absurd.  If  the  Divine  Maker 
of  all  was  so  intensely  active  at  the  day-dawn 
of  time,  why,  throughout  all  succeeding  ages, 
has  he  remained  in  inactive  torpor?  Did  the 
work  of  creation  so  exhaust  him  as  to  over- 
whelm him  with  lethargy  ever  since?  The 
old-time  writer  of  the  Genesis  legend  seemed 
to  have  some  such  notion,  but  it  certainly  does 
not  comport  with  our  modern  ideas  of  the 
Omnipotent  Divine  Life. 

Or  shall  we  adopt  the  more  radical  theory  of 
the  origin  of  the  universe,  which  denies  out- 


86  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

right  any  knowledge  or  well-founded  belief  in 
a  Personal  Creator  and  recognizes  the  Divine 
Power,  if  at  all,  as  only  a  mere  material  main- 
spring of  the  universe,  a  primal  energy  or  sub- 
stance to  which  we  are  not  entitled  to  attribute 
either  intelligence  or  good-will,  but  which  goes 
onward  unfolding  and  progressing  without  plan 
or  purpose  according  to  the  irresistible  laws 
'of  evolution? 

Such  a  view  leads  the  mind  that  analyzes  it 
to  discern  still  further  inconsistencies.  The 
ideas  of  time,  space  and  substance  are  intuitive 
ideas,  of  which  the  reason  cannot  divest  itself. 
Energy,  motion,  matter  and  mind  are  grand 
facts  which  we  cannot  analyze  into  any  simpler 
elements.  So  the  naturalistic  theorist  sup- 
poses as  Prof.  Haeckel  does,  that  each  of  them 
is  infinite.  Accordingly,  the  insistent  expound- 
ers of  Naturalism  assure  us  that  the  universe 
is  eternal  in  time,  infinite  in  space,  illimitable 
in  variety,  eternally  persistent  and  unchange- 
able in  substance  and  energy,  and  that  it  al- 
ways has  had  both  material  and  mental  sides, 
which  interact  and  develop  by  inflexible  laws, 
whose  countless  permutations  constitute  all  the 
myriad  phenomena  of  the  cosmos. 

It  is  a  speculation  of  colossal  grandeur; 
but  it  is  as  much  an  enterprise  of  faith  and 
imagination  as  any  dogma  of  Theist  or  Pan- 
theist.    The  domain  of  science  is   confined  to 


LAW  AND  PROVIDENCE  87 

the  finite.  All  these  "a  priori''  intuitions  as  to 
the  infinite  outreach  in  space  and  time  of  cer- 
tain primal  realities  are  plainly  beyond  the  ex- 
perimental boundary  of  natural  knowledge. 
Especially  faulty  is  the  conception  that  under- 
lies this  apotheosis  of  Nature's  order.  Read- 
ers of  popular  science  can  hardly  fail  to  notice 
how  these  expositors  of  modern  discoveries  ex- 
alt the  laws  of  evolution,  gravity,  conservation 
of  energy  and  so  on,  as  real  things,  active  in 
themselves.  They  are  spoken  of  as  creative 
and  governing  forces,  as  the  ultimate  agencies 
of  the  world — indeed,  as  the  original  realities 
of  the  universe.  "The  unity  of  the  universe," 
says  one  of  the  boldest  and  most  brilliant  ex- 
positors of  this  view,  M.  Talne,  "did  not  come 
from  any  exterior  thing  foreign  to  the  world, 
nor  from  any  mysterious  thing  concealed  in  the 
world.  It  came  from  a  general  fact  similar  to 
others,  a  generative  law  from  whence  others  are 
deduced,  in  the  same  way  as  from  the  law  of 
gravitation  all  the  phenomena  of  gravity  are 
deduced."  Intoxicated  with  this  new  discovery 
of  thought  M.  Talne  mounts  his  metaphysical 
Pegasus  and  sings  the  new  epic  of  creation. 
"At  the  supreme  summit  of  things,  at  the  in- 
accessible height  of  the  lumlnlferous  ether,  the 
eternal  axiom  pronounces  itself;  and  the  pro- 
longed echo  of  that  creative  formula  com- 
posed, by  its  inextinguishable  undulations,  the 


88  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

immensity  of  the  universe.  .  .  .  All  life  is 
one  of  its  expressions,  all  being  one  of  its 
forms,  and  the  succession  of  things  descends 
from  it  according  to  indestructible  necessi- 
ties, bound  by  the  divine  rings  of  the  golden 
chain." 

Surely,  it  is  a  marvelous  axiom,  an  extraor- 
dinary formula  that  can  effect  all  this,  and  if 
difficulties  and  inconceivabilities  of  thought, 
such  as  (according  to  the  opponents  of  theism) 
require  us  to  disbelieve  in  a  Creator,  are  really 
proper  grounds  for  declining  to  accept  any  idea 
at  all,  certainly  they  may  well  justify  us  in  re- 
fusing to  embrace  this. 

"Words  which  should  be  the  servants  of 
thought  are  too  often  its  masters."  By  am- 
biguity of  language  and  subsequent  confusion 
of  thought,  laws  are  represented  as  working 
things,  capable  of  self-activity.  But  laws  of 
themselves  have  neither  life  nor  movement, 
power  nor  sanction.  Laws  of  themselves  do  not 
repress  treason,  punish  perjury,  nor  protect 
property.  Will  a  statute  put  a  burglar  in 
prison  without  the  aid  of  constable,  attorney, 
or  judge?  Will  merely  engraving  a  sheepskin 
prevent  a  communit}^  from  drinking  what  it  de- 
sires to  drink?  Were  this  indeed  true,  how 
easy  would  the  work  of  government  become ! 

A  law  in  itself  is  but  a  bit  of  parchment 
covered  with   certain   signs.     Its   power  comes 


LAW  AND  PROVIDENCE  89 

simply  from  the  fact  that,  in  the  first  place,  it  is 
expressive  of  certain  minds  and  wills, — the  law- 
givers' who  enact  it — and,  secondly,  that  it  is 
recognized  by  certain  other  minds  and  wills 
— those  who  know  themselves  rightly  subject  to 
these  law-givers.  So  what  are  called  by  a  nat- 
ural metaphor  "the  laws  of  Nature,"  have  no 
energy  in  themselves.  Laws  do  not  really 
make  a  stone  fall  nor  a  vapor  rise.  What 
we  call  the  law  of  gravity  is  but  a  short, 
abstract  name  for  the  universal  fact.  It  sums 
up  the  orderly  series  of  phenomena,  the  uniform 
recurrence  of  certain  events.  It  is  but  our  own 
expression  of  a  series  which  we  observe,  our  in- 
terpretation of  a  classification  which  w^e  make 
according  to  an  inward  ideal.  It  implies,  like 
civil  law,  an  understanding  power  by  which 
the  law  is  recognized,  and  also  a  motor  power 
of  which  it  is  the  expression.  In  this  motor 
power  lies  the  coercive  character  commonly  at- 
tributed to  law.  It  is  never  contained  in  the 
law  itself  (the  mere  line  of  facts)  but  it  al- 
ways belongs  to  the  causative  force  behind, 
which  the  order  of  effects  implies,  and  of  which 
that  order  is  simply  the  stated  method  of  ac- 
tion. While  we  notice  only  a  customary  rep- 
etition of  certain  antecedents  and  consequents, 
we  cannot  feel  sure  that  this  is  more  than  an 
accidental  coincidence.  It  is  only  when  we  can 
trace  the  shadow  of  some  permanent  force  as 


90  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

the  bond  of  the  succession  that  we  can  feel  con- 
fident that  we  have  found  something  absolutely 
constant  in  its  order.  "The  scientific  mind," 
as  Tyndall  well  said,  "can  find  no  response  in 
the  mere  registration  of  sequence  in  Nature. 
The  further  question  intrudes  itself  with  resist- 
less might,  Whence  comes  the  sequence?  What 
is  it  that  binds  the  consequent  with  its  antece- 
dent in  Nature?'  The  truly  scientific  intellect 
can  never  attain  rest  until  it  reaches  the  forces 
by  which  the  observed  succession  is  produced." 

Law  is  not,  then,  anything  in  itself,  only  the 
method  of  action  of  a  force.  Nor  is  force  to 
be  considered  as  insensate  and  impersonal,  an 
activity  independent  of  mind.  The  intelligent, 
orderly,  progressive  motions  of  force  which 
Nature  exhibits,  reason  must  conceive  as  guided 
and  impelled  by  an  ever-present  mind.  Acci- 
dental combinations  and  variations  will  revert 
to  their  original  condition  unless  there  is  in- 
telligence to  preserve  and  guide  them. 

The  theory  of  naturalism  does  not  then  seem 
reasonable.  Shall  we  accept,  then,  the  first 
theory, — that  of  Divine  intervention  at  special 
times  for  special  objects?  This  theory  also  is 
open  to  equal  objections.  It  is  opposed  to 
the  instinctive  belief  of  mankind  in  the  uni- 
formity of  Nature.  It  is  opposed  to  the  fact 
that  wherever  we  can  attain  a  thorough  knowl- 
edge  of  any   supposed  supernatural  event  we 


LAW  AND  PROVIDENCE  91 

can  trace  It  back  to  the  action  of  some  natural 
cause,   and  find  it  occurring  in  strict  accord- 
ance   with    natural    law.      Like    the    previous 
theory,  this  supernatural  theory  also  regards 
the  world  as  an  engine  of  brute  force  rolling 
on  alone,  while  its  Author  sits  quietly  aloof  in 
an  infinite  remoteness.     Only,  on  this  theory, 
God  now  and  then  leans  down  from  his  repose 
above  to  wind  up  the  machinery  afresh,  to  re- 
place a  broken  pinion,  or  to  fling  loose  a  caught 
band.     God,  on  this  theory,  seems  to  have  done 
his  work  so  imperfectly  at  first  that  he  must 
needs  be,  every  once  in  a  while,  putting  in  his 
hand  to  shove  the  machinery  along,  and  keep 
it  from  getting  out  of  gear  and  bolting  the 
straw   and   throwing   away   the   wheat.     This 
theory  suggests  a  God  who  could  not  foresee 
the  results  of  his  own  laws,  but  has  to  interfere 
afterwards  in  their  action  to  meet  an  unantici- 
pated emergency.     This  theory  gives  us  a  God 
who  becomes  sorry  for  what  he  has  done,  changes 
his    mind,   is   capricious,   inequitable,   unstable 
in  his  methods  of  action,  altering,  in  accordance 
with  the  petitions  of  selfish  and  short-sighted 
mortals,  the  laws  which  in  his  utmost  wisdom 
he  had  devised.     God  is  exhibited,  in  this  rep- 
resentation  of  him,  as   one  who  now  becomes 
angry   and  punishes,  now  is   appeased  by  the 
sinner's    repentance,    and   remits    the   deserved 
penalty.     He  appears  to  be  a  Deity  who  visits 


92  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

and  succors  special  ones,  leaving  others  un- 
helped,  who  enlightens  favored  nations,  leav- 
ing others  in  darkness,  who  is  now  near,  now  re- 
mote, now  exorable,  now  inexorable.  On  this 
theory  God  acts  directlj^,  indeed,  in  those  phe- 
nomena of  Nature  that  are  mysterious  and 
striking,  but  in  the  ordinary,  general  course  of 
events,  in  the  usual  order  of  Nature,  he  has 
no  hand.  Man  is,  indeed,  left  free  in  general, 
but,  when  an  exigency  occurs,  his  free-will  is 
entirely  taken  away.  If  it  is  God's  will  that 
he  should  live,  he  cannot  shoot  himself;  he 
will  not  perish,  though  he  stay  in  the  midst  of 
a  burning  house.  Man's  consciousness  that 
he  has  at  all  times  the  power  of  taking  away 
life  is,  by  this  view  of  Providence,  declared 
fallacious ;  the  instinct  that  always  bids  him 
preserve  his  life,  and  that  always  moves  him  to 
employ  natural  means  as  indispensable  for  so 
doing,   is   declared  fallacious. 

In  the  oldest  tradition  of  any  great  physical 
disaster  that  has  come  down  to  us  (I  mean  that 
of  the  great  Flood,  a  tradition  that  probably 
had  an  historical  basis  in  some  extensive  and 
destructive  inundation  in  Mesopotamia  in  olden 
time)  the  cause  assigned  was  the  universal  and 
irremediable  wickedness  of  the  human  race, 
which  had  made  Jehovah  repent  that  he  had 
ever  created  man.  When  a  pestilence  visited 
Athens  in  the  early  history  of  that  city  it  was 


LAW  AND  PROVIDENCE  93 

held  to  be  a  manifestation  of  the  wrath  of 
Minerva  for  sacrileges  committed  at  her  altar. 
So  in  Brooklyn,  New  York,  not  many  years  ago 
when  a  theatre  burned  to  the  ground  and 
many  hundreds  of  people  lost  their  lives  in  the 
fire,  several  clergymen  of  that  city  asserted  in 
their  pulpits  that  the  disaster  was  a  testimony 
of  the  Divine  displeasure  against  sinful  dra- 
matic exhibitions. 

Of  course,  there  are  cases  where  there  is  a 
measure  of  truth  in  this  view  of  natural  calami- 
ties as  Divine  retributions ;  for  there  are  not 
a  few  cases  where  there  is  a  physical  connection 
between  the  violation  of  natural  law  and  the 
special  disaster  following  it.  Many  physical 
evils  proceed  from  man's  own  folly,  selfishness 
or  carelessness.  Such  are  the  diseases  that 
come  from  transgressions  of  the  laws  of  bodily 
purity,  temperance  and  hygiene,  the  epidemics 
that  come  from  wide-spread  uncleanliness,  the 
famines  that  come  from  social  shiftlessness  and 
misgovernment  and  the  droughts  that  arise 
from  clearing  the  earth  too  freely  of  its 
forests.  These  may  be  properly  regarded  as 
self-inflicted  penalties  for  the  infraction  of  the 
sacred  laws  of  Nature.  The  responsible  cause 
for  such  calamities  is  not  to  be  found  in  the 
lack  of  Providential  care  or  in  the  infliction  of 
Divine  wrath,  but  in  the  lack  of  proper  human 
carefulness.     In  a  large  proportion  of  the  dis- 


94  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

asters  from  which  our  race  suffers  the  cause  is 
that  men,  for  the  purpose  of  securing  some  ad- 
vantage, essay  too  adventurously  to  handle  the 
titanic  powers  of  Nature  and  carelessly  neglect 
the  safeguards  that  should  accompany  their  op- 
erations. When  it  turns  out  that  they  have 
made  a  terrible  mistake,  they  cast  the  blame  on 
a  "mysterious  Providence"  instead  of  upon  their 
own  rashness  or  shortsighted  economy.  In  the 
terrible  loss  of  life  that  in  recent  times  has  come 
from  disrupted  reservoir  dams,  devastating  city 
conflagrations,  vast  national  epidemics  and  the 
wholesale  loss  of  thousands  of  passengers  when 
huge  steamboats  come  into  collision  with  the 
floating  ice  mountains  of  the  Atlantic,  the  plain 
lesson  is  that  of  a  solemn  warning  against  the 
too  general  carelessness  of  our  race  when  con- 
fronting or  trying  to  manage  the  colossal  forces 
with  which  our  civilization  calls  us  to  deal.  As 
the  modern  chauffeur's  method  is  not  to  see  how 
far  away  from  the  danger  line  he  can  keep, 
but  how  near  to  it  he  can  run,  so  the  modern 
engineer's  custom  is  to  see  on  how  small  a 
margin  of  safety  he  can  get  along;  his  thought 
is  not,  how  strong  a  dam  or  how  firm  a  pier 
will  give  perfect  security,  but  how  weak  a  one 
will  hold  under  usual  conditions.  When  the 
unusual  strain  occurs  and  the  ruin,  against 
which  no  safeguard  had  been  prepared,  comes 
about,  the  popular  blame  is  apt  to  be  cast  upon 


LAW  AND  PROVIDENCE  95 

the  indifference  of  God  instead  of  upon  the 
recklessness  of  man. 

But,  while  many  physical  catastrophes  are 
due  to  human  infraction  of  the  laws  of  nature, 
nevertheless,  to  interpret  these  misfortunes  in 
general  as  Divine  judgments  on  the  particular 
individuals  that  suffer  them,  is  to  add  to  them 
an  undeserved  bitterness.  Those  who  are 
chiefly  to  blame  often,  in  fact,  escape  alto- 
gether the  resultant  calamity,  while  those  who 
are  little  or  not  at  all  responsible  may  have  to 
bear  the  full  effects  of  the  infraction  of 
Nature's  order.  It  is  a  noticeable  character- 
istic of  physical  causation  that  the  penalties 
that  result  from  breaking  natural  law  spread 
far  beyond  the  field  and  life  of  the  immediate 
transgressor. 

Moreover,  it  is  a  great  error  to  confound 
those  two  quite  distinct  trains  of  causation — 
the  physical  and  the  spiritual.  The  natural 
forces  and  the  moral  forces  have  each  in  gen- 
eral their  respective  spheres  and  associations. 
Fear  and  remorse  follow  moral  laws  and  are 
not  kept  out  of  tyrant  hearts  by  the  battle- 
ments of  citadels  or  by  the  bayonets  of  senti- 
nels. So  the  material  energies  that  produce 
earthquakes  follow  physical  laws  and  make  no 
inquiry  into  the  character  or  usefulness  of  their 
victims,  as  they  proceed  to  their  work  of  de- 
struction.    The  tornado  destroys  saint  and  sin- 


96  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

ner  with  equal  impartiality,  if  the  man  gets  in 
its  way  while  the  tornado  is  about  its  business 
of  purifying  the  atmosphere.  The  flood 
wrecks  the  church  as  relentlessly  as  it  does  the 
rum  shop.  The  only  question  it  asks  is,  "How 
weak  are  the  walls ;  how  low  is  the  ground  on 
which  it  stands.?"  It  is  superstition  and  not 
religion  that  confounds  the  natural  disturb- 
ances of  the  elements  with  the  wrath  of  God 
upon  the  ungodly. 

Such  a  connection  of  cause  and  effect,  in 
fact,  is  as  spurious  as  that  which  in  ancient 
days  supposed  the  success  or  defeat  of  an 
army  to  be  contingent  on  a  clap  of  thunder 
or  the  occurrence  of  an  eclipse. 

It  is  superstition  and  not  religion  that  de- 
grades the  high  dignity  and  majestic  march 
of  Providence,  in  its  wise,  comprehensive,  and 
beneficent  operations  for  the  ph^^sical  care  of 
the  whole  world,  into  such  a  petty  and  ca- 
pricious conspiracy  of  the  elements  to  favor  or 
avenge  some  special  case  in  another  sphere  of 
action.  It  proceeds  on  the  gross  idea  that  ex- 
ternal rewards  on  this  earth  are  the  compen- 
sations which  virtue  must  have  in  order  to  vin- 
dicate Providence. 

This  supernatural  theory,  then,  no  more 
suffices  than  the  other.  It  involves  unworthy 
conceptions  of  God.  It  satisfies  neither  the 
heart  nor  the  mind.     Both  methods  of  cutting 


LAW  AND  PROVIDENCE  97 

the  tangled  skein  are  alike  unsatisfactory. 
No  one  ever  cuts  a  knot  without  finding  that 
he  has  exscinded  something  that  it  was  es- 
sential to  retain.  It  is  better  patiently  and 
laboriously  to  untie  itj  as  far  as  you  can, 
though  all  its  snarls  may  not  be  disengaged. 
This  let  us  now  try  to  do. 

Look  at  the  sphinx  from  behind  and  it  seems 
a  lion.  Look  at  it  in  front  and  it  seems  a 
woman.  It  is  neither  and  it  is  both.  That 
which  we  have  been  puzzling  over  is  just  such  a 
sphinx.  To  make  out  the  truth  about  it,  we 
must  take  the  elements  of  both  opposing 
theories,  put  them  together  and  fuse  them  into 
a  new  product. 

The  key  is  to  be  found  in  larger  and  pro- 
founder  views  of  Nature  and  of  God.  Both 
the  deeper  science  and  the  deeper  theology,  in 
my  opinion,  require  such  a  combination  of  the 
opposing  elements  of  both  theories.  They  each 
lead,  when  thoroughly  examined,  to  a  point  of 
view  where  we  see  that  all  these  seemingly  in- 
congruous factors  can  be  united  in  one  har- 
monious system. 

A  Divine  Will  as  the  causative  power  of  the 
world's  phenomena  is  the  fundamental  demand 
of  theology.  But  when  the  nature  of  such  a 
Divine  Will  is  thoroughly  considered,  it  is  seen 
that  any  high  idea  of  God  requires  the  events 
of  Nature  to  be  orderly,  and  excludes  all  arbi- 


98  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

trarlness  as  much  as  science  Itself  does.  The 
world,  to  the  understanding  theologian,  must 
not  only  have  had  an  intelligent  cause  as  its 
origin,  but  this  Intelligence  must  have  been  per- 
fect, this  Power  must  have  been  infinite.  By  the 
clear  thinker,  God  is  neither  to  be  dehuman- 
ized and  likened  to  a  blind  force,  nor  on  the 
other  hand  is  he  to  be  likened  to  an  imperfect, 
short-sighted,  partial  man.  God  must,  indeed, 
be  held  as  similar  to  a  human  spirit,  but  not  be- 
cause he  is  human-like,  but  because  man  is 
faintly  God-like;  because  with  all  its  defects  a 
human  spirit  is  the  highest  being  the  analogy 
of  whose  nature  can  throw  light  upon  God's 
character.  But  we  must  not  attribute  to  God 
the  limitations  and  infirmities  that  are  in  man. 
We  must  take  the  highest  ideals,  the  noblest 
aspirations,  the  most  exquisite  skill,  the  most 
consummate  wisdom  and  goodness  which  we 
can  cull  from  the  flower  of  all  nations ;  we  must 
expand  this  ideal  with  the  fire  of  imagina- 
tion, and  purify  it  in  the  alembic  of  thought, 
and  then  say,  "This  but  faintly  shad- 
ows forth  God's  perfection.  He  is  Omnipo- 
tent, Omnipresent,  All-Wise,  All-Just,  All- 
Loving." 

What  kind  of  action  is  alone  consistent  with 
the  character  of  such  a  Being?  It  has  some- 
how been  thought  that  will,  even  the  Divine 
Will,  is   necessarily  changeful   and   capricious. 


LAW  AND  PROVIDENCE  99 

Hence,  whenever  and  wherever  order  has  been 
traced,  there  it  has  been  considered  that  God 
could  not  be  acting.     This  comes  from  not  rec- 
ognizing the  infiniteness  and  perfection  of  the 
Divine.     Will  in  man  is  variable,  not  from  the 
nature  of  will,  but   from  the  nature  of  man. 
It   is   due  to   the   imperfection   common   to   all 
human  powers.     Not  being  able  to  foresee  the 
end  from  the  beginning,  man  can  form  no  in- 
variable  plan   of  action,   but   he   must   modify 
his   action   to   circumstances,   delaying  his   de- 
cision until  the  moment  of  action.     Not  being 
able  to  make  his  work  perfect  the  first  time,  he 
must  resort  to  a  method  of  trial  and  error.    He 
must  learn  by  mistakes,  and  by  change  upon 
change    approximate    to    a    complete    achieve- 
ment.    In  proportion  as  he  grows  in  wisdom, 
he  is  less  and  less  led  to  change  his  method  of 
action.     More  and  more  he  forms,  at  the  out- 
set, plans  large  enough  and  considerate  enough 
of  all  possible  emergencies,  so  that  afterwards 
they  do  not  need  to  be  altered.     Suppose  the 
knowledge    perfect     and    the     power    infinite. 
Then   each  operation  would  be  done  the  very 
first  time  in  the  very  best  way,  and  would  never 
need  to  be  corrected  or  improved  upon  subse- 
quently.     Suppose,    next,    the    nature    of    the 
man  to  be  made  immutable ;  then  the  immuta- 
bleness  of  his  action  would   also   follow.     Re- 
move, then,  even  from  human  will,  those  finite 


100  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

conditions,  and  it  becomes  incompatible,  not 
with  invariableness  of  action,  but  with  variable- 
ness. In  the  infinite  and  perfect  God  how  much 
more  so !  The  plans  of  such  a  Creator  will 
never  need  mending.  There  will  be  no  unin- 
tended, incidental  results,  no  partialities  nor 
favorites.  His  previsions  will  care  alike  for 
the  special  and  for  the  common,  for  the  small 
and  for  the  great. 

In  the  laws  of  a  God  of  infinite  wisdom  and 
power,  there  is  no  need,  then,  no  place,  even, 
for  interruptions  of  the  established  order.  The 
great  miracle  of  Providence,  as  Isaac  Taylor 
has  well  said,  is  that  "no  miracle  is  required  to 
accomplish  its  purposes." 

We  must  put,  therefore,  at  the  foundation 
of  a  true  scheme  of  Providence,  by  the  demand 
of  theology  as  well  as  that  of  science,  the  con- 
ception that  law,  absolutely  invariable  law, 
reigns  throughout  the  universe.  As  Prof.  Wm. 
James  has  forciblv  said:  "The  God  whom 
science  recognizes  must  be  a  God  who  does  a 
wholesale,  not  a  retail  business."  There  may 
be  phenomena  in  regard  to  which  we  do  not  yet 
know  what  law  or  laws  they  obey.  There  may 
be  laws  which  we  have  not  yet  discovered,  as 
the  laws  of  magnetism,  electricity,  steam,  were 
unknown  three  hundred  years  ago  and  radio- 
activity unsuspected  even  fifty  years  ago. 
These  undiscovered  laws  and  forces  may  over- 


>    )    « 


LAW  AND  PROVIDENCF,  101 

bear  at  times  the  laws  which  we  do  know.  The 
formulas  of  our  laws  may  be  of  greater  com- 
plexity than  we  think,  so  that  there  may  be 
what  seem  variations  from  the  law,  which  varia- 
tions, however,  are  in  strict  accordance  with  it. 
As  examples  of  such  cases  may  be  cited  the  laws 
by  which  our  sun's  heat  is  maintained,  and  the 
tails  of  comets  are  thrown  out  in  opposition  to 
the  force  of  gravitation,  as  well  as  the  laws  by 
which  the  luminiferous  ether,  though  tenacious 
as  steel,  avoids  impeding  the  motion  of  bodies 
moving  through  it.  To  these  may  be  added 
the  phenomena  of  somnambulism,  telepathy 
and  the  mysteries  of  those  events,  so  far  as 
they  are  real,  which  we  call  miracles  and  oc- 
cult phenomena.  These,  like  man}^  other 
phenomena,  are  yet  unreduced  to  law ;  but  if 
they  are  to  be  credited  as  actual  phenomena, 
the  mind  must  suppose  that  they  have,  how- 
ever, their  natural  laws  and  causes,  which  may 
some  day  be  discovered.  No  event  that  really 
happens  can  be  an  interruption  of  the  original 
order  and  plans  of  the  universe. 

The  forces  of  Nature  then  must  be  recognized 
as  going  on  without  interruption.  If  the  air  is 
overloaded  with  moisture,  the  rain  descends, 
though  it  ruins  the  poor  man's  crop  and  washes 
away  the  widow's  cottage.  If  a  spark  be 
dropped  into  a  keg  of  gunpowder,  it  explodes 
as    promptly   whether    it    shatters    a    trouble- 


102  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

some   rock    or   kills    a   hundred   innocent   and 
virtuous  men. 

There  is  no  slip,  no  flaw  in  the  interlinked 
order.  As  the  Commander-in-chief  of  a  huge 
army,  numbering  half  a  million  soldiers,  in  bat- 
tles like  those  of  Gettysburg  or  Spottsylvania 
cannot  omit  to  hold  strategic  positions  or  as- 
sault breastworks,  whose  capture  is  indispen- 
sable, because  many  lives  must  be  lost,  so  must 
the  grand  Cosmic  Campaign  go  onward  with- 
out favor,  irregularity  or  privileged  omissions. 


CHAPTER  VI 
GOOD  THE  FINAL  GOAL 

The  thinker  who  looks  facts  in  the  face  must 
then  grant  that  the  physical  laws  and  energies 
that  reign  in  the  Universe  are  so  relentlessly 
regular  and  so  systematized  to  accomplish 
wholesale  effects  rather  than  special  and  per- 
sonal ends  that  whenever  there  is  careless  hu- 
man management  terrible  mischiefs  are  apt  to 
result.  Who  is  really  responsible  for  them? 
Is  not  the  underlying  blame  for  these  ruinous 
catastrophes  much  less  that  of  the  inexperi- 
enced man  who  thoughtlessly  drops  the  spark 
that  fires  off  the  dynamite  of  Nature,  than 
that  of  the  Author  of  the  world  who  has  so  or- 
ganized its  formidable  elements  and  deadly^  laws 
that  such  an  explosion  is  likely  to  occur? 

Certainly,  it  is  true  that  no  solution  to  this 
problem  of  evil  is  more  than  superficial  that 
does  not  justify  the  Creative  Lawgiver  and 
that  rigid  system  of  general  law  that  every 
now  and  then  gives  such  frightful  results. 

Let  us  then  examine  this  system  as  a  whole. 
We  shall  see  that  all  the  energies  and  methods 
of  Nature  that  make  up  the  great  Order  of  the 
Cosmos  were  intended  for  good  and  necessary 

103 


104  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

to  the  welfare  and  happiness  of  the  earth's  liv- 
ing inhabitants.  Nothing  in  Nature  was  made 
solely  for  evil  or  chiefly  so.  No  nerve  was 
made  solely  to  ache ;  no  organ  merely  or 
chiefly  that  man  should  suff'er  pain ;  no  force 
only  to  do  harm.  The  evils  which  sometimes 
occur  from  the  great  laws  of  Nature  are  neither 
purposed  nor  usual,  but  are  incidental  to  the 
regular  and  beneficent  operation  of  the  law  as 
a  whole.  Take  as  an  instance  one  of  the  most 
terribly  destructive  of  modern  catastrophes, 
the  volcanic  explosion  in  the  island  of  Marti- 
nique a  few  years  ago.  The  physical  forces 
that  brought  the  appalling  ruin  on  this  occa- 
sion were  the  same  serviceable  energies  that  in 
their  usual  course  of  action  heat  our  houses, 
run  our  engines,  turn  our  water-wheels  and 
keep  every  object  and  creature  on  the  earth's 
surface  from  flying  off  into  the  interstellar 
void.  For  a  volcanic  eruption  is  but  the  efl'ect 
of  certain  laws.  There  are  the  gravity  and  the 
hydraulic  forces  that  bring  the  upland  mud 
down  the  river  and  load  it  on  to  the  yielding 
ocean  bed  until  a  great  fissure  in  the  earth's 
crust  lets  in  the  water  to  the  molten  depths 
of  the  crater.  Combined  with  these  forces 
there  are  the  laws  of  heat  that  turn  the  sea- 
water  into  steam  when  it  comes  into  con- 
tact witli  the  internal  fires  and  so  expels  the 
ashes    and   lava    through    the    giant    vent-hole 


GOOD  THE  FINAL  GOAL         105 

of  the  volcano  to  spread  disaster  far  and  wide. 

To  prevent  such  gigantic  disasters  would 
you  have  the  Ruler  of  Nature  forbid  heat  to 
expand  and  water  to  turn  to  steam  and  fire  to 
burn?  That  would  indeed  prevent  this  partic- 
ular kind  of  catastrophe.  But  when  these 
forces  of  Nature  are  vetoed,  what  shall  keep 
us  warm  in  winter  and  cook  our  food  and  work 
our  steam-engines  and  hold  us  down  to  this 
comfortable  earth,  instead  of  spinning  off  into 
the  outer  planetary  spaces  w^here  the  cold  is  far 
below  zero? 

Suppose  that  by  the  gift  of  a  miraculous 
power  you  were  enabled  to  forbid  ashes  to  fall 
and  lava  to  run  down  the  mountain  side  upon 
the  villagers  settled  below.  But  if  you  have 
no  gravity  any  longer  to  urge  things  down- 
ward, what  will  bring  the  planet  back  in  its 
punctual  orbit  to  give  you  the  flowers  of  spring 
and  the  fruits  of  summer? 

Similarly  in  the  case  of  the  many  other 
natural  processes,  such  as  the  tornadoes,  floods, 
cloudbursts  and  similar  things  that  the  critics  of 
Providence  so  anathematize  as  hard  and  cruel. 
Suppress  them  and  then  what  shall  water  the 
valley  and  turn  the  mill-wheel  and  keep  the 
great  ocean  of  the  atmosphere  from  stagnat- 
ing? In  fact,  it  is  only  these  troublesome  laws 
of  heat  and  gravity  which  the  grumblers 
against  Providence  would  eradicate  that  keep 


106  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

us  all  from  freezing  to  death  and  hold  our 
planet  back  from  flying  to  pieces  under  the  in- 
fluence of  the  centrifugal  force  of  its  revolu- 
tion. "Abolish  gravity,"  as  Samuel  R.  Cal- 
throp  once  so  forcibly  said,  "and  you  dissipate 
the  earth.  On  second  thought  would  it  not  be 
better  to  keep  our  globe  and  our  old  friend, 
Gravity,  even  if  it  does  aff^ord  us  some  inci- 
dental trouble,  now  and  then?" 

"But,  tell  us,"  persist  these  fertile  critics 
who  delight  in  pointing  out  the  improvements 
that  might  be  made  in  the  great  cosmic 
scheme,  "why  might  not  the  laws  of  nature  be 
suspended  merely  whenever  they  threaten  to  do 
harm,  but  not  at  other  times?  Why  have 
them  so  cruelly  constant?"  The  plain  reason 
is  because  this  absolute  regularity  of  law  is  the 
indispensable  means  for  the  training  and  edu- 
cation of  every  sentient  being.  Such  a  method 
as  has  been  proposed,  of  "special  suspension  of 
natural  law"  whenever  a  man  mishandles  any 
dangerous  physical  energy,  would  make  of  him 
an  animated  puppet,  whose  strings  are  pulled 
every  minute  by  a  Power  outside  of  himself. 
Under  such  circumstances  man's  opportunity 
to  learn  wisdom  by  experience  would  surely  be 
removed.  If  the  sequences  of  cause  and  efl*ect 
were  not  thus  unvarying,  the  past  would  throw 
no  light  to  guide  us  on  the  path  before  us  and 
to    counsel    us    in    our   decisions.     We    should 


GOOD  THE  FINAL  GOAL         107 

know  neither  how  to  avoid  the  evil  nor  how  to 
attain  the  good,  nor  even  what  is  good  and  safe 
as    distinguished    from    their    opposites.      Of 
course,  it  seems  a  bitter  thing  when  the  care- 
less  approach  of  a  bit  of  cloth  to   a   gas-jet 
sets  a  crowded  theatre  in  flames;  but  it  is  just 
this   absolute   inflexibility   of   the   laws   of  fire 
that  enables  us  to  use  it  daily  with  such  gen- 
eral safety.     Attractive  as  the  plan  seems  for 
interposing    a    supernatural   veto    on    the    dis- 
tructive  action  of  every  natural  law  whenever 
any  misfortune  is  imminent  or  whenever  a  pious 
prayer  is  raised  to  the  courts  of  heaven  by  any 
of  the  multitudinous  suppliants  of  earth,  never- 
theless such  a  plan  would  bring  upon  human 
affairs    confusion    and    anarchy    right    away. 
Certainly,  it  would  grievously  impair  that  edu- 
cational and  moral  discipline  that  now  is  the 
very  best  gift  of  the  government  of  God.     How 
could  human  beings  ever  learn  knowledge  from 
mixing  with  life  and  the  world  under  such  a 
denatured   order,  exempted   from   all  penalties 
or  warnings  that  result  from  their  own  heed- 
lessness or  mistakes?     Without  a  trustworthy 
universe  and  a  God  who  keeps  his  word,  man 
could   never   have    gained    that   understanding 
of  the   scientific   order   by   which   he   has   har- 
nessed nature  to  his  chariot  wheels,  nor  could 
he  have  gained  that  development  of  character 
which  now  constitutes   the   shining   aureole   of 


108  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

his  being.  As  James  Martineau  has  so  well 
said,  "A  fickle  world  only  admit  of  a  lawless 
race.  No  obedience  could  be  required  of  those 
who  were  placed  among  shifting  conditions ;  to 
whom  foresight  is  denied  and  where  wisdom  is 
as  likely  to  go  astray  as  folly.  As  well  might 
you  attempt  to  build  upon  the  restless  sea,  or 
steer  by  shooting  stars  as  shape  a  mind  or 
train  a  character  where  action  was  a  lottery." 
An  all-sufficient  reason,  then,  why  the  laws  of 
Nature  are  general,  and  invariable  instead  of 
special  and  variable  is  that  on  the  whole,  with 
all  its  incidental  calamities,  it  is  the  better 
system. 

Nevertheless,  these  would-be  "improvers  of 
nature,"  who  so  abound,  will  still,  I  suspect, 
persist  and  will  ask  if  it  is  not  at  least  con- 
ceivable that  an  Omniscient  God  might  have 
drawn  the  fangs  of  nature  and  yet  left  sufficient 
iron  in  its  laws  for  the  education  and  discipline 
of  humanity. 

No  doubt  it  is  conceivable  that  in  some  way, 
not  understood  by  man,  the  whole  great  order 
of  Nature  might  have  been  made  so  tame  and 
gentle  that  the  earth  would  have  been  watered 
without  floods  and  the  atmosphere  have  been 
purified  without  tornadoes  and  man  have  been 
fed  without  sweating  over  work  and  children 
might  have  been  born  without  pain.  I  do  not 
care  to  deny  that  this  might  have  been  done. 


GOOD  THE  FINAL  GOAL         109 

But  if  we  grant  it  to  have  been  possible,  then 
comes  a  further  question.  After  all,  would  a 
world  organized  and  managed  on  such  a  plan 
have  been  better  adapted  than  the  present  sys- 
tem to  human  happiness  and  especially  to  that 
great  end  which  the  evolution  of  life  seems  to 
be  aimed  at,  viz.,  the  development  of  humanity. 
Let  us  think  seriously  about  this  question. 
Let  us  picture  to  ourselves  such  a  world, 
out  of  which  all  the  rigidity  has  been  ex- 
tracted. It  is  a  world  in  which  there  is  un- 
varying sunshine  and  tranquillity — no  rough 
places,  no  trials,  nothing  dangerous,  nothing 
violent,  no  severe  work,  no  temptation,  no 
calamities,  no  pangs  of  birth  or  death.  At  the 
first  thought  such  a  world  seems  an  Eden.  But 
when  we  come  to  realize  somewhat  what  it  would 
be  to  live  on  and  on  in  its  sluggish,  monotonous 
Lotus-land,  we  see  how  soon  it  would  become 
decidedly  tiresome,  thoroughly  insipid  and  op- 
pressive. Humanity  needs  something  to  hope 
for  and  something  to  fear,  or  a  wretched  ennui 
envelopes  him  in  its  enervating  fog.  The 
posts  in  life  where  a  man  has  least  call  to  labor 
and  least  to  disturb  him  are  precisely  those 
where  he  yawns  and  groans  the  most.  There 
is  a  delight  that  danger  gives  to  the  virile 
human  being  which  security  can  never  bestow. 
See  with  what  joy  the  J^oung  lad  climbs  the 
steep  cliff  or  hangs  from  the  topmost  bough  of 


110  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

the  tree.  Notice  with  what  exultation  men 
penetrate  wilds  of  African  jungles  or  the 
frozen  wastes  of  an  Antarctic  continent.  How 
does  a  furious  storm  make  the  pulse  beat  with 
electric  thrills  and  lift  the  mind  toward  the 
sublime  as  no  hour  of  comfortable  quiet  can 
do !  A  world  free  from  all  physical  dangers 
would  not  even  make  men  happj. 

Still  less  would  it  fulfill  the  great  object  of 
life — the  full  development  of  the  human  spirit. 
Whoever  gets  sufficient  insight  into  the  alpha- 
bet of  being  to  see  that  the  great  aim  of  our 
human  apprenticeship  is  not  to  breed  a  race 
of  Sybarites  but  to  unfold  the  human  soul  to 
strength  and  light  and  love,  he  will  comprehend 
how  impossible  it  is  to  accomplish  this  except 
by  contact  with  danger  and  struggle  with  the 
forces  of  nature. 

Certainly,  as  we  look  back  over  the  upward 
path  of  animal  and  human  life  we  can  see  that 
this  is  the  way  in  which  the  evolution  of  man 
to  his  present  state  has  been  attained.  In  the 
process  of  development  the  easy  life  often  does 
not  lead  upward  but  downward.  The  received 
explanation  of  the  chief  degenerate  forms  of 
life,  such  as  the  fungi,  the  barnacles,  the  para- 
sites and  the  slave-owning  ants,  is  that  these 
debased  forms  have  come  about  from  avoidance 
of  the  more  strenuous  life  of  struggle  and  self- 
help  ;   and  so,  while  they  have  had  at  first  a 


GOOD  THE  FINAL  GOAL         111 

very  comfortable  time,  sponging  their  living 
from  some  fellow-member  of  the  animate  king- 
dom, they  have  eventually  paid  for  it  by  drop- 
ping ignominiously  out  of  the  upward  proces- 
sion of  life. 

I  fancy  that  if  any  one  of  us  were  endowed 
with  omnipotence  for  a  quarter  of  an  hour  and 
allowed  to  improve  the  creative  scheme  accord- 
ing to  his  own  idea,  the  very  first  edict  that  he 
would  issue  would  be  an  edict  abolishing  all 
pain.  But  I  am  afraid  such  a  reformer  of  Na- 
ture's laws  would  soon  find  himself  in  deeper 
trouble  than  ever.  For,  unquestionably,  sensa-. 
tions  of  pain  are  the  vigilant  watch-guards 
that  now  preserve  the  body  from  greater  in- 
juries. A  very  instructive  incident  in  this  con- 
nection is  that  related  by  Prof.  Wm.  B.  Car- 
penter. A  laborer,  through  a  certain  nervous 
malady,  lost  the  sense  of  feeling  in  his  feet; 
consequently,  one  night  when  in  his  sleep  his 
feet  fell  into  a  bed  of  quick  lime,  they  were 
so  injured  before  he  felt  any  pain  that  they 
had  to  be  amputated.  As  far  as  we  can  see, 
it  is  only  by  these  sensitive  sentinels,  the 
nerves,  that  animal  organisms  can  be  kept 
from  dismemberment  and  the  citadel  of  life 
be  saved  from  premature  destruction.  It 
is  the  pangs  of  hunger  in  living  things  that 
quicken  them  to  the  accumulation  of  food,  that 
spur  us  to  exertion,  ambition  and  progress  and 


112  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

all  the  pleasures  and  good  things  linked  with 
them.  When  we  seek  the  deepest  root  of  the 
grand  tree  of  civilization  we  find  it  in  pain. 
Destitute  as  man  was  of  the  elephant's 
strength,  the  armadillo's  armor,  the  claws  and 
horns  on  which  other  animals  have  depended 
for  protection,  man  seemed  the  most  weak  and 
defenseless  creature,  physically,  of  all  the  ani- 
mals. But  this  very  weakness  developed  in 
him  a  superior  sensitiveness  to  suffering,  and 
that  sensitiveness  and  those  severer  dangers 
and  struggles  stimulated  in  him,  as  in  no  other 
denizen  of  earth,  the  civilizing  faculties,  such 
as  skill,  enterprise  and  co-operation. 

To  disengage  the  ideal  beauty  of  the  human 
spirit  from  the  material  matrix  in  which  it 
sleeps,  it  must  know  the  touch  of  sharp  and 
often  rough  instruments.  The  heart  must  have 
personal  experience  in  bitter  things  as  well 
as  in  sweet.  We  need  to  test  ourselves  in  the 
storm  and  tempest  as  well  as  in  the  balmy 
breeze  and  tuneful  grove.  Only  in  this 
checkered  arena  of  storm  and  sunshine,  woe 
and  joy  can  humanity  be  unfolded  to  that 
quickness  of  thought,  moral  robustness  and 
tenderness  and  bravery  of  heart  to  which  it  is 
the  very  purpose  of  life  to  bring  us.  Even  sin 
has  its  use  as  a  means  of  the  soul's  develop- 
ment, because  the  struggle  with  moral  evil  ex- 
ercises  and  tests  the  human  spirit  even  more 


GOOD  THE  FINAL  GOAL         113 

than  the  grapple  with  material  obstacles. 
Moral  innocence  is  but  a  weakling.  All  robust 
virtue  is  gained  by  successive  conflicts  and  self- 
conquests.  And  similarly  in  sorrow  there  is  a 
notable  education  of  our  spiritual  capacities. 
In  the  same  degree  that  we  come  to  understand 
the  supreme  worth  of  this  self-development  we 
must  recognize  the  beneficent  purpose  of  human 
grief.  As  the  gray-haired  man  or  woman 
looks  back  over  the  vista  of  the  years  and  puts 
side  by  side  its  brightest,  gayest  and  saddest 
seasons,  is  there  any  hour  on  which  the  Divine 
blessing  seems  more  visibly  to  rest  than  just 
that  when  the  tears  fell  fastest.? 

And  just  here  it  is  well  to  notice  another 
thing.  One  of  the  familiar  scientific  facts  is 
that  it  is  the  break  in  the  electric  currents, 
made  by  the  carbon  pencils,  that  causes  the 
illuminating  spark  to  flash  forth,  and  it  is  only 
where  there  is  resistance  to  the  dynamic  stream 
that  its  hidden  radiance  is  manifested.  Just 
so,  it  is  the  apparent  breaks  in  the  course  of 
God's  regular  beneficence  that  make  this  good- 
ness of  Divine  Providence  shine  forth  most 
conspicuously.  While  all  the  wheels  of  mate- 
rial prosperity  run  smoothly,  it  seems  as  if  the 
struggle  for  gold  was  man's  ruling  passion 
and  a  selfish  materialism  the  creed  that  com- 
mands his  worship.  But  when  some  great  ca- 
lamity makes  its  appeal  to  human  aid,  how  the 


114  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

angel  in  the  man  asserts  itself  and  resumes  its 
sway!  How  the  halls  of  trade  and  exchange 
(supposed  to  be  dedicated  only  to  mammon) 
become  the  most  prompt  and  generous  in  of- 
fering relief!  Recall  the  acts  of  noble  exertion 
and  loyalty,  the  touching  examples  of  self-sac- 
rifice or  uncomplaining  endurance  which  in 
such  great  exigencies  spring  forth  before  re- 
vering eyes  and  light  up  the  dark  background 
with  a  heavenly  glory?  See  how  the  pathetic 
appeals  for  aid  banish  for  the  hour  the  demons 
of  sectarianism  and  political  partisanship  and 
obliterate  ancient  walls  of  jealousy  and  sepa- 
ration! Is  it  not  just  the  hard  flints  of  these 
rigid  laws  and  their  resultant  calamities  that, 
as  they  strike  the  steel  of  true  hearts,  elicit 
these  sparks  of  human  emotion  and  irradiate 
the  faces  of  great  multitudes  with  the  glow  of 
a  generous  benevolence  to  which  they  had  long 
been  strangers? 

In  view  of  such  instinctive  outbursts  of  help- 
ful response  in  every  sore  hour  of  human  trial, 
is  it  not  as  logical  as  it  is  natural  to  ask 
if,  when  God  inspires  such  tender  compas- 
sion in  the  hearts  of  his  children,  there  is 
no  compassion  In  his  own?  Surely  not.  It  is 
the  best  of  guarantees  that  he  who  organized 
in  the  human  heart  such  sympathetic  emotions 
is  one  whose  Divine  love  exceeds  all  human 
love,  and  who,  in  better  ways  than  we  surmise, 


GOOD  THE  FINAL  GOAL         115 

will  bless  and  is  now  blessing  every  soul  that 
he  has  brought  into  life,  however  great  this 
man's  temporary  trouble  seems  to  be. 

Not  so  much  in  nature's  inexorableness  and 
occasional  destructiveness  is  the  heart  of  God 
to  be  seen,  but  rather  in  his  customary  good- 
ness, in  the  recuperating  life  that  so  soon 
makes  the  flowers  bloom  above  the  ashes  and 
the  lava.  Above  all,  it  is  seen  in  that  answer- 
ing flood  of  pity  and  in  those  abundant  show- 
ers of  succor  that  from  all  parts  of  the  com- 
pass are  poured  out  in  such  tragic  times  with- 
out other  compulsion  than  the  appeal  of  human 
need. 

Such  are  some  of  the  methods  by  which  the 
Divine  Providence  has  so  arranged  that  the 
invariable  laws,  in  directions  where  they  seem 
to  bear  hardly  on  living  creatures,  are  bal- 
anced, and  the  bad  incidental  effect  is  neu- 
tralized by  automatic  adjustments.  The  ob- 
servant mind  notices  a  vast  multitude  of  these 
self-acting  compensations. 

As  man  fits  his  clocks  with  self-regulating 
pendulums,  where  the  expansion  of  one  metal 
corrects  the  contraction  of  another,  so  the  Di- 
vine Mechanician  with  infinitely  more  perfect 
skill  corrects  the  action  of  one  invariable  law 
by  another  equally  invariable.  We  have  space 
to  give  only  one  or  two  instances  out  of  thou- 
sands.    Should  the  earth's  rotation  from  any 


116  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

cause  be  increased,  the  waves  of  the  Polar  Sea 
would  rush  off  to  the  equator,  and  put  a  brake 
on  the  too  impetuous  planet.  Should  its  mo- 
tion on  its  axis  be  from  any  cause  diminished, 
the  equatorial  ocean-bed  would  be  drained  off 
to  the  poles,  and  spur  up  the  flanks  of  the  lag- 
ging globe  with  their  greater  circumferential 
velocity.  Do  the  billows  beat  harder  on  the 
crustaceans  that  denizen  the  sea  side  of  the 
breakwater?  It  quickens  the  secretions  that 
make  their  shells,  and  proportionately 
strengthens  their  armor  to  endure  it.  Does 
the  lowered  sun  of  winter  bring  greater  cold 
to  animal  life?  It  facilitates  at  the  same  time 
the  absorption  of  oxygen  in  the  lungs,  makes 
the  warmth  there  greater  and  the  coverings  of 
fur  or  wool  grow  thicker  and  warmer. 

And  in  the  inward  world,  still  more  than  in 
the  outward,  are  these  wonderful  compensa- 
tions to  be  noticed.  The  elastic  air  fits  no 
more  exquisitely  into  every  nook  and  comer  of 
the  earth's  surface,  giving  room  for  each  pro- 
jecting object,  contracting  to  suit  every  pres- 
sure, expanding  to  fill  every  space,  leaving  no- 
where the  smallest  vacuum,  than  will  man's  in- 
ward nature  fit  into  all  deviations  and  irregu- 
larities of  his  external  circumstances.  Come 
ease  or  trial,  success  or  failure,  health  or  sick- 
ness, life  or  death,  yet  that  wonderfully 
adapted  human  nature,  with  its   spiritual   de- 


GOOD  THE  FINAL  GOAL  llT 

mands  side  by  side  with  its  material  wants,  its 
heavenly  goal  contemporaneous  with  its  earthly 
aims,  can  find  profit,  good,  contentment  in 
them  all.  What  blocks  the  way  to  one  object 
is  made  the  needed  stepping-stone  to  something 
else.  Does  the  rain  put  a  veto  on  a  long- 
looked- for  enjoyment?  It  gives  instruction  in 
self-denial.  Does  a  conflagration  reduce  you 
to  poverty?  It  is  a  precious  lesson  in  endur- 
ance and  humbleness.  Does  painful  disease 
tie  you  down  to  a  sick  bed?  It  gives  a  golden 
opportunity  for  spiritual  contemplation  and 
growth,  which  active  business  or  household 
cares  deny.  Does  Death  take  away  the  friend 
on  whom  we  have  leaned?  It  sends  the  com- 
forter, the  priceless  one  who  will  never  leave 
us,  the  regenerated  self,  with  a  will  self-reliant, 
a  heart  softened  and  sympathetic,  a  soul  that 
trusts  unwaveringly  in  God,  and  that  lives  in 
communion  with  him.  As  the  deadly  night- 
shade can  find  in  the  purest  soil  the  elements  of 
its  rank  poison,  and  as,  contrariwise,  the  coral 
can  draw  from  unsunned  seas  the  tints  of  rosy 
morn,  so  our  hearts,  mightiest  of  all  trans- 
muters,  will  draw  from  all  kinds  of  external 
fortune  exactly  that  which  is  meet  for  them ; 
they  will  change  horns  of  plenty  into  cups  of 
gall,  roughest  burdens  into  the  pearly  gates 
that  open  into  the  New  Jerusalem. 

Thus,  while  the  physical  order  keeps  on  un- 


118  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

swerving  in  its  own  way  and  sphere,  seemingly 
without  discrimination,  God's  providence  yet 
makes  perfect  provision  for  all,  giving  to  each 
its  due,  and  only  its  due.  And  it  is  be- 
cause this  is  done  so  perfectly  by  the  inward 
laws  that  the  outward  laws  do  not  have  to  be 
turned  aside  to  attend  to  it. 

In  a  similar  way  is  prayer  answered,  not 
merely  occasionally,  but  universally,  while 
physical  laws  retain  all  the  time  their  invari- 
ability. It  takes  place  not  in  opposition  to 
fixed  laws  of  cause  and  effect  but  in  accordance 
with  them.  They  are  laws  in  its  own  spiritual 
sphere,  working  outside  of  and  supplementary 
to  physical  laws.  Not  a  gust  may  blow  gen- 
tler, nor  a  wave  be  less  devouring,  for  the 
prayer  of  the  shipwrecked  sailor.  Yet  his 
prayer  is  answered.  As  when  the  iron  is  pre- 
sented to  the  magnet  the  attractive  force  is 
evoked  into  action  and  draws  the  two  fast  to- 
gether, so  when  a  creature  soul  turns  to  the 
great  Soul  the  waiting  power  of  the  Holy 
Spirit  is  given  access  to  the  finite  spirit,  bring- 
ing in  its  influx,  calmness  to  the  mind,  and 
steadiness  to  the  will,  brushing  conscience  clear 
of  blurring  mists  and  giving  a  trust  in  God's 
wisdom  and  goodness  that  adopts  whatever  is 
received,  though  it  be  death  itself,  as  an  order 
from  the  Divine  Commander  not  to  be  ques- 
tioned.    Law,  moving  with  a  prescient  love  as 


GOOD  THE  FINAL  GOAL         119 

undoubted  as  its  fixity,  is  the  flying  shuttle  that 
weaves  and  maintains  the  universal  web  and 
woof  of  worlds.  Through  every  changing 
process  Providence  wins  its  widening  way 
and  carries  all  nearer  and  nearer  the  blessed 
goal. 

Is  this,  however,  all  that  there  is  to  the 
Divine  Government?  Is  this  care  which  pro- 
vides for  the  beneficent  issues  of  nature  and  hu- 
man life  simply  a  thoughtful  contrivance  of 
God,  adjusted  at  the  outset  of  things?  Or  is 
it  perhaps  merely  an  undesigned  effect  of  the 
cosmic  energies  which  protect  life  only  because 
the  system  could  not  otherwise  keep  itself  in 
motion  ? 

On  the  contrary,  for  the  full  satisfaction  of 
the  religious  instincts,  God  himself  should  be 
recognized  as  having  direct  participation  in 
the  operations  of  the  world.  The  spiritual 
emotions  require  a  present  and  active  God,  not 
an  absentee  Ruler.  Our  religious  intuitions 
can  no  more  tolerate  the  idea  that  the  Power 
governing  the  universe  should  be  blind  or  sub- 
conscious than  the  reason  can  tolerate  that  con- 
ception of  it  that  makes  it  capricious  and  arbi- 
trary. Only  a  conscious  Divine  Love  and  Life 
can  claim  the  spirit's  loyalty  and  be  recognized 
by  the  human  soul  as  sufficiently  superior  to  it- 
self to  be  worthy  of  worship. 

The  idea  of  the  world  as  a  titan  machine, 


120  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

started  and  left  to  itself,  is  inconsistent  with 
any  elevated  idea  of  God.  Man  has  to  con- 
struct machines  to  do  his  work  in  order  to  ob- 
tain the  help  of  forces  outside  of  his  own  body, 
such  as  the  steam,  the  water  power  or  the  elec- 
tric energies  of  nature.  Otherwise  he  has  only 
the  energies  of  his  own  body  to  draw  upon  and 
he  is  obliged  constantly  to  be  present  and  per- 
sonally to  attend  to  the  work.  But  the  Om- 
nipotent and  Omniscient  One  does  not  need  any 
assistance  nor  are  there  such  additional  forces 
outside  of  himself  for  him  to  draw  upon.  Om- 
nipresent as  He  is.  He  needs  no  deputies  to 
act  for  Him  in  His  absence. 

Moreover,  science,  no  more  than  religion, 
can  look  upon  this  ceaselessly  changing  and 
growing  nature  as  a  wheel-work  of  lifeless  bits 
and  parts.  Science  is  daily  coming  more  and 
more  to  the  conviction  that  the  cosmos  is  (to 
use  Humboldt's  striking  phrase)  "a  living 
whole,"  an  organism  everywhere  throbbing  with 
vital  power  and  sensibility  and  struggling  for 
its  unfolding  into  breathing,  knowing  creature 
forms.  Molecule,  atom,  vortex-ring  and  elec- 
tron are  found  to  be  known  onlv  as  centers  of 
force,  charges  of  electric  energy  or  points  of 
pressure  in  the  ether,  according  to  the  par- 
ticular scientific  theory  which  the  investi- 
gator adopts.  All  the  great  laws  of  heat, 
chemistry,   ph^'^sics,   planetary   motion   or  psy- 


GOOD  THE  FINAL  GOAL         121 

chic  attraction  are  but  measures  or  meth- 
ods of  the  particular  forces  that  are  acting. 
What  are  each  and  all  of  these  in  the  thought 
of  the  candid  analysts  of  modern  science,  ex- 
cept symbols  and  special  modes  of  a  subtle 
Protean  Power  ever  shifting  from  one  form  to 
another,  but  always  coming  out  with  sub- 
stantially the  same  sum-total  of  force,  actual 
or  potential,  with  which  it  started.  The 
dynamic  source  of  this  ceaseless  transformation 
play  is  a  Grand  Energy,  more  than  physical, 
ever  acting,  out  of  an  exhaustless  Life,  and 
from  this  higher  fountain  sending  down  the 
streams  of  vitality  which  circulate  through  all 
the  veins  of  the  vast,  out-spreading  cosmos. 
But  energy,  according  to  the  testimony  of  our 
most  eminent  philosophers  and  men  of  science, 
we  know  only  as  connected  with  conscious  effort, 
the  push  or  the  resistance  of  the  will.  Thus 
at  length  the  vast  universe,  in  all  its  changing 
states,  its  varied  phenomena  and  processes,  is 
found  to  be  a  manifestation  of  personal  volition 
and  the  action  of  that  Guiding  Mind  without 
which  there  can  be  no  pressure,  effort  or  direc- 
tion. As,  then,  we  have  to  suppose  that  this 
Guiding  Mind  and  energizing  Will  pervade  the 
cosmos  wherever  energies  act,  of  whom  else 
can  they  be  the  attributes  than  of  the  One  only 
Infinite — the  Omnipresent  God? 


122  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

"Ever  fresh^  the  broad  creation, 
A  divine  improvisation, 
From  the  heart  of  God  proceeds; 
A  single  will,  a  million  deeds." 

When,  then  (In  the  light  supplied  by  this 
profounder  view  into  the  secret  depths  of 
Nature) ,  we  look  with  its  help  at  those  trouble- 
some world-enigmas  that  we  have  been  trying 
to  solve,  how  wondrously  are  they  transformed ! 
Matter  is  no  longer  a  wall,  barring  us  from 
God.  It  is  the  ever-changing,  scintillant 
moving-picture  that  shows  that  he  is  here;  and 
all  the  brave  spectacles  and  captivating  forms 
of  beauteous  nature  are  but  dye  and  lace-work 
in  those  glorious  draperies  by  which  the  In- 
visible One  makes  himself  visible  to  our  eyes. 
The  laws  of  the  world  do  not  prove  God's  ab- 
sence, but  rather  that  his  steady  will  maintains 
its  customary  habits.  When  we  trace  the  seam- 
less webs  of  evolution  from  the  first  filmy 
mistiness  of  the  gathering  nebula  up  to  the 
"sea  and  continent  girdled  globe,"  we  are  but 
tracing  the  process  by  which  the  Unseen  One 
weaves,  thread  by  thread,  "the  garment  we  see 
him  by."  In  flashing  sun  he  throws  out  some 
sparkle  of  his  glory,  in  thunder  and  earth- 
quake some  dim  semblance  of  his  power.  And 
so,  as  we  follow  up  the  process  of  gradual  de- 
velopment,   watching    it    climb    by    insensible 


GOOD  THE  FINAL  GOAL  123 

gradations,  first  to  the  primal  life  cell  and  from 
that  through  higher  and  higher  vegetal  and 
animal  species  up  to  man,  we  but  track  the 
steps  by  which  God  further  unfolds  his  divine 
attributes  and  moulds,  feature  after  feature,  his 
mask  of  clay. 

Thus,  we  never  need  to  fear  that  God  forgets 
his  children  or  Is  deaf  to  their  cry  or  answers 
not  their  supplications.  For  however  neces- 
sarily connected  with  its  natural  antecedent 
any  event  Is  and  however  unchanged  by  our 
prayer  It  may  be.  It  Is  God's  direct  doing;  and, 
therefore,  the  devout  heart  must  serenely  ac- 
cept It  as  the  Divine  answer  and  the  good  an- 
swer to  the  petition.  However  naturally  and 
historically  the  truth  may  come  to  us,  It  should 
be  reverently  adopted  as  God's  own  speech  and 
revelation.  The  infinitude  of  God  is  not 
that  which  removes  him  from  us  to  a  mist3> 
remoteness,  but  that  which  enables  him  to 
be  equally  present  In  every  part  of  the 
world.  In  the  moulding  of  a  tear  or  the 
exquisite  markings  of  the  minutest  shells  there 
is  the  same  perfect  finish  as  in  the  punctual  re- 
turn of  the  huge  planet  to  its  appointed  place 
in  the  heavens  on  its  astronomic  date.  "The 
hand  that  moves  the  world"  is  not  merely  di- 
rected by  a  greater  power  and  a  more  far- 
sighted  wisdom  than  any  prayer  of  ours  can 
claim,   but   it   is   guided  by   a   more   thorough 


124  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

good-will  and  we  may  not  hesitate  to  say  even 
by  a  warmer  and  truer  love  than  any  human 
criticism  exhibits.  And  one  of  the  clearest 
signs  of  that  love  is  its  divine  voice  in  the  hu- 
man heart — that  divine  voice  which  in  every 
hour  of  affliction  sounds  forth  in  the  compassion 
and  self-sacrifice  of  our  fellowmen.  Every 
human  tear  is  a  lens  through  which  God's  sun- 
shine sparkles  for  our  consolation.  Who  else 
but  this  Divine  Father  of  all  has  bound  heart 
to  heart  with  such  responsive  chords  of  love 
and  pity?  What  is  more  incredible  than  that  in 
the  Maker  of  man  there  is  an  ignoble  ab- 
sence of  those  noblest  traits  with  which 
he  has  distinguished  his  children — those  very 
traits  which  instinctively  we  call,  in  the  same 
breath,  at  once  the  divinest  and  yet  the  most 
characteristically   human   of   our   endowments.'* 


CHAPTER  VII 
FATE  OR  CHOICE 

An  old  friend  once  told  me  of  an  abandoned 
boat  that  he  had  watched  in  an  idle  hour  at 
the  beach,  drifting  in  an  equally  idle  fashion, 
to  and  fro ;  and  he  feelingly  spoke  of  the  mel- 
ancholy symbol  it  furnished  in  illustration  of 
many  a  life. 

No  longer  steered  by  a  master's  hand  to  some 
definite  point,  such  a  derelict  floats  fruitlessly 
this  way  and  that,  at  the  mercy  of  the  strug- 
gling forces  of  wind  and  current.  Now  driven 
out  to  sea  by  the  off  shore  gust ;  now,  as  the 
zephyr  dies,  swept  in  towards  land  by  the  rising 
tide;  now  in  the  channel,  now  out  of  it,  keep- 
ing to  no  constant  course ;  it  is  a  helpless  vic- 
tim of  the  elements.  In  course  of  time,  to  be 
sure,  it  will  fetch  up  somewhere.  But  that 
somewhere  is  pretty  certain  to  be  no  safe 
haven,  but  some  fatal  rock  or  shoal,  where  its 
ribs  are  crushed  to  fragments  and  its  mourn- 
ful skeleton  lies  wasting  away,  a  grim  v/arning 
to  every  mariner. 

Of  such  an  abandoned  boat  are  we  often  re- 
minded, as  we  look  about  us  in  human  society 

and    see    the    lives    that,    unloosed    from    their 

125 


126  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

anchors,  without  any  moral  compass-needle  and 
without  resolute  will  for  pilot,  drift  to  and  fro, 
as  the  winds  of  circumstance  carry  them. 

He  who  has  had  any  considerable  experience 
of  the  sea  of  life  forebodes  too  well  the  fate  of 
these  human  derelicts.  He  knows  that  how- 
ever safe  and  pleasant  their  condition  may 
seem  under  a  smiling  sky,  they  are  powerless; 
and  when  the  billows  rise  and  pound  the  poor 
vessel,  as  with  loose  helm  and  flapping  sail  it 
lies  in  the  trough  of  the  sea,  and  when  anon, 
the  storm  drives  the  passive  thing  upon  the 
cruel  rocks,  there  is  no  power  any  longer  to 
save  it  from  destruction.  On  the  waves  of 
life,  as  on  the  billows  of  Atlantic  or  Pacific, 
whoever  would  win  the  happiness  and  success 
of  which  he  dreams,  whoever  would  preserve 
unwrecked  that  moral  treasure  that  has  been 
entrusted  to  him  must  keep  his  own  hand  on 
the  helm  of  his  ship  and  with  fixed  purpose 
steer  for  the  mark  of  the  prize  of  his  high 
calling. 

At  the  present  day,  however,  such  a  straight- 
forward course,  resolutely  adhered  to,  is  one 
beset  with  many  difficulties.  The  immense  com- 
plexity of  modern  life  tends  to  distract  a  man's 
thoughts  and  dissipate  his  energies  as  never 
before.  And  both  religion  and  science  subtly 
combine  their  forces  to  rob  men  and  women  of 
any  earnest  conviction  of  self-governing  ability. 


FATE  OR  CHOICE  127 

The  older  and  sterner  forms  of  Christian 
theology,  by  their  dogmas  of  predestination 
and  man's  natural  inability,  have  been  ter- 
ribly discouraging  to  human  efforts,  at  least 
in  the  moral  field.  According  to  this  super- 
stitious doctrine,  the  saints  and  the  reprobate, 
the  chosen  ones  elected  to  Paradise  and  the 
non-elect  who  have  been  passed  over  by  God 
and  doomed  to  eternal  misery,  to  the  "glory 
of  his  eternal  justice,"  have  been  selected  by 
the  Omniscient  One  ages  beforehand.  Man  is 
unable  to  work  out  his  own  salvation.  All  his 
efforts  are  frustrated  by  the  fall  of  human 
nature  in  Adam  and  the  consequent  moral  in- 
ability and  total  depravity  of  the  race.  All 
that  any  one  can  do  is  submissively  to  wait  for 
the  miracle  of  some  descent  of  the  Holy  Ghost 
to  redeem  those  whom  God  chooses  to  rescue. 

For  many  long  generations  these  theological 
dogmas  lay  like  iron  fetters  on  the  mind  of 
man,  chaining  the  will  and  hardening  the  heart. 
Though  in  many  quarters  they  still  remain, 
happily  they  are  now  fast  dissolving  beneath 
the  sunlight  of  modem  thought. 

But  as  these  bonds  are  losing  their  power, 
modern  science  and  philosophy  are  forging 
new  chains,  subtler  still.  From  all  sides, 
descend  about  us  the  steel  wires  inscribed: 
"Circumstances  make  the  man."  Every  act  we 
are  told,  is  the  inevitable  outcome  of  its  pre- 


128  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

ceding  condition.  Every  seeming  choice  is  the 
compulsion  of  the  stronger  motive.  Free-will 
is  an  illusion,  exploded  now  by  science.  Crime 
and  vice  have  their  averages  calculated  by  the 
statistician.  There  were  so  many  hundred 
murders,  so  many  thousand  cases  of  arson  or 
embezzlement  in  each  of  the  last  ten  years. 
There  will  be  again  the  same  number  on  the 
average  in  the  next  ten  years.  Virtue  and 
vice  are  therefore  subject  to  fixed  laws  and 
physical  causes,  like  the  return  of  winter  and 
summer.  They  are  "merely  products  of 
Nature,"  as  Taine  says,  "just  like  sugar  and 
vitriol." 

The  corroding  influence  of  this  growing  Ma- 
terialism affects  all  the  departments  of  life.  It 
dissolves  the  sense  of  obligation  and  snatches 
the  crown  from  virtue  to  put  it  on  the  heads 
of  fact  and  force.  It  degrades  literature  and 
art  to  voluptuous  sensuousness.  It  makes 
luxury,  money,  position  and  worldly  success 
the  sine-qua-non  of  happiness ;  and  to  attain 
this  success  the  pull  of  some  friend  or  the  push 
of  lucky  chance  is  the  determining  factor.  Man 
is  the  victim  of  his  environment.  Crime  is 
made  poetical.  Tears  are  drivelled  over 
poisoners  and  wife  murderers ;  and  those  who 
yield  to  unlawful  passions  and  violate  their 
marriage  vows  are  made  the  saints  upon  whom 
popular   novelists   pour    forth   their   laudation 


FATE  OR  CHOICE  129 

and  melodramatic  sympathy.  That  a  woman, 
when  piqued,  should  betray  her  lover's  secret  is 
"just  what  is  to  be  expected,"  says  an  eminent 
university  professor,  "of  the  cleverest  of  her 
sex."  If,  when  importuned  by  a  libertine,  she 
surrenders  her  chastity  as  to  an  unavoidable 
fate,  this  is  held  up  in  the  mirror  of  our 
realistic  fiction  as  but  the  natural  course  of 
things.  That  a  politician  should  not  sacrifice 
moral  principle  as  an  iridescent  dream,  when- 
ever a  point  in  the  game  of  politics  is  to  be 
made  by  disloyalty  to  honesty  and  truth,  this 
is  regarded  by  practical  men  of  the  world  as 
Quixotic  folly.  In  short,  the  assault  of  tempta- 
tion is  presented  as  always  an  irresistible  as- 
sault and  an  all-sufficient  excuse  for  any  crime 
or  vice.  Even  our  ethical  philosophers  tell  us 
that  ideal  conduct  is  not  possible  in  the  midst 
of  men  otherwise  constituted.  Conduct  that  is 
alien  to  the  prevailing  modes  of  action  is  some- 
thing in  which  we  cannot  successfully  persist. 
Such  is  the  melancholy  teaching  of  the  popular 
writers  of  the  day. 

Against  this  reduction  of  humanity  to  a 
helpless  victim  of  circumstances  every  virile 
human  being  ought  vigorously  to  protest. 
The  soul  of  man  is  more  than  its  conditions.. 
The  human  will  is  the  helm  of  every  human 
course. 

Do     not,     however,     misunderstand     me.     I 


130  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

do  not  mean  that  human  volition,  even  the 
most  resolute,  can  do  anything  that  it  de- 
sires. Our  will  is  by  no  means  wholly  free. 
The  term  "free  will"  describes  clumsily  and 
inexactly  the  great  truth  that  it  aims  to  ex- 
press. The  truth  would  be  better  described  as 
the  mastership  of  the  mind  in  choosing  and 
willing.  To  a  very  great  extent,  of  course, 
we  are  in  the  hands  of  an  over-ruling  Power 
from  which  we  cannot  escape.  For  this  we 
ought  to  thank  God.  I  shudder  to  think  of 
the  consequences  to  the  world,  were  its  destiny 
entirely  committed  to  our  blind  human  will, 
unguarded  by  the  great  balance  wheels  of 
Providence.  It  is  a  good  thing,  I  believe,  that 
no  Alexander  or  Napoleon  has  ever  so  influ- 
enced the  course  of  history  as  has  the  annual 
local  rainfall  or  the  most  commonplace  of  hu- 
man senses  and  desires.  It  is  by  these  guid- 
ing forces,  environing  us  and  sweeping  us 
steadily  toward  certain  Providential  goals,  that 
the  grand  evolution  of  society  is  kept  on  its 
safe  and  beneficent  course.  Much  as  human 
effort  may  make  the  pendulum  of  progress  vi- 
brate back  and  forth  and  from  side  to  side,  the 
constant  gravitation  of  the  social  world  keeps 
every  erratic  movement  within  certain  bounds 
and  balances  the  temporary  oscillations  toward 
one  extreme  by  speedy  reactions  in  a  contrary 
direction. 


FATE  OR  CHOICE  131 

Nevertheless,  I  maintain  that  our  personal 
choice  is  ever  more  determinative  of  our  des- 
tiny than  our  external  surroundings  are. 
Every  manly  virtue  conquers  temptation  and 
rises  upon  it,  instead  of  being  necessarily  com- 
pelled to  surrender  to  it  whenever  it  confronts 
it. 

Human  personality  is  related  to  material 
conditions  and  organic  heredities  very  much  as 
Commodore  Parry  was  situated  when  upon  a 
great  Arctic  ice-floe.  He  could  not  help  being 
borne  southw^ards  at  a  certain  speed  by  irre- 
sistible ocean  currents.  But  by  his  personal 
exertions  and  those  of  the  dogs  whom  he  guided 
he  could  travel  east  or  w^est  or  north,  accord- 
ing to  the  route  that  he  selected.  It  is,  of 
course,  a  mere  truism  to  say  that  a  man  in- 
evitably follows  the  stronger  inclination  within 
him  and  must  do  so.  But  to  interpret  that  as 
meaning  that  he  has  nothing  to  do  with  de- 
termining w^hat  that  greater  inclination  shall 
be,  that  is  a  bare-faced  begging  of  the  question. 
His  greater  inclination  is  not  solely  determined 
by  forces  without  himself  but  chiefly  by  his 
own  selection.  A  multitude  of  desires  and 
images  and  thoughts  of  all  kinds,  good,  bad 
and  indifl^erent,  throng  into  every  active  mind, 
out  of  the  environing  sea  of  sensations  and 
physical  conditions  and  out  of  the  deeps  of  his 
inherited  nature  and  subconscious  being.     The 


132  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

man  does  not  call  them,  nor  can  he  prevent 
their  coming,  nor  even  understand  them  often- 
times, any  more  than  the  sea-captain  brings  to 
himself  or  understands  the  billows  and  storms 
that  beat  on  his  vessel.  The  man  is  no  more 
responsible  for  the  arrival  of  his  thoughts,  fan- 
cies and  longings  than  the  sea-captain  for  the 
winds  and  waves.  What  he  is  responsible  for 
is  how  he  trims  his  sails  and  turns  his  rudder 
so  as  to  take  him  to  shipwreck  or  a  safe  har- 
bor. God  has  given  to  every  normal  human 
being  a  power  of  choice  such  that  he  need  never 
do  what  his  conscience  tells  him  to  be  wrong; 
and  that  power  of  moral  choice,  limited  though' 
it  be,  includes  that  which  most  concerns  our 
happiness,  our  success  and  above  all,  our  vir- 
tue and  righteous  character. 

The  truth  I  believe  to  be  that  temptation 
overcomes  men  and  women,  in  ninety-nine  cases 
out  of  a  hundred,  not  because  of  its  irre- 
sistible coercion,  but  because  of  the  weakness 
of  our  defence.  It  is  because  of  the  traitor 
heart  within,  which,  for  the  enticing  bribe  of 
some  coveted  enjoyment  or  ambition,  willingly 
opens  the  gates  to  the  besieging  forces.  The 
real  difficulty  is  with  our  own  feeble  wills  and 
sensuous  nature,  siding  with  the  invaders.  The 
radical  defect  is  our  poor  and  sleazy  character. 
That  is  why  the  circumstances  that  hardly  ex- 
cite  the    smallest    tremor   in    one   man's    scnsi- 


FATE  OR  CHOICE  133 

bility  are,  to  another,  irresistible  forces,  sweep- 
ing him  entirely  off  his  feet. 

That,  indeed,  is  the  difficulty, — our  own 
weakness  of  character.  I  grant  it ;  and  I 
grant  it,  too,  knowing  perfectly  well  what  our 
modern  determinists  will  say  when  I  do  grant 
it.  They  will  urge  at  once,  "You  have  sur- 
rendered your  own  case.  For  this  inner  na- 
ture, this  mental  and  moral  constitution  is 
something  over  which  people  have  no  control. 
It  is  a  result  of  heredity  and  education — a 
product,  therefore,  of  the  environment,  only 
one  step  removed."  No  child  can  choose  his 
parents,  nor  his  early  training.  His  character 
is  therefore,  in  great  measure,  fixed  before  he 
has  the  chance  to  will  or  choose ;  and  whatever 
he  wills  or  chooses  has  been  determined  upon 
beforehand  by  that  inherited  character  in  con- 
nection with  the  preponderant  mass  of  sensa- 
tions and  motives  that  at  any  given  time  are  in- 
cident upon  his  mind.  All  that  any  mind  can 
do  is  to  yield  to  that  motive  which  its  own 
weight,  the  pressure  of  circumstances,  and  the 
pull  of  our  susceptibilities,  derived  from  hered- 
ity and  education,  make  "the  path  of  least  re- 
sistance." Such  is  the  argument  of  the  de- 
terminists. 

Now,  of  course,  our  inherited  character 
limits  and  conditions  all  our  conduct.  But, 
however  much  narrower  the  domain  of  our  self- 


134  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

government  may  be  than  we  had  thought,  nev- 
ertheless, I  maintain,  there  is  a  circle  within 
the  mind  where  we  have  a  power  of  choice.  The 
proof  of  it  is  that  most  direct  and  incontest- 
able of  proofs — the  testimony  of  consciousness. 
We  know  by  daily  experience  that  we  can  direct 
the  current  of  our  thoughts ;  we  can  allow  our 
fancy  to  wander  freely  from  subject  to  sub- 
ject or  we  can  guide  our  thoughts  steadily 
along  a  given  line  of  reasoning  or  calculation 
or  action.  We  can  turn  the  light  of  attention, 
now  upon  this,  now  upon  that  portion  of  the 
mental  field.  Without  this  mastery  of  the 
mind  over  the  direction  of  attention  and  upon 
the  subject  of  our  psychic  concentration,  no 
thinker  could  follow  out  a  syllogism  or  make 
a  mathematical  calculation.  Without  this 
power,  no  judge  could  weigh  evidence  and 
decide  a  legal  problem ;  no  business  man 
could  reasonably  deliberate  upon  and  con- 
clude a  complicated  financial  proposition.  The 
ability  to  do  these  things  depends  on  our 
power  to  hold  one  chosen  idea  fixedly  be- 
fore us  and  dismiss  all  other  thoughts  for 
awhile.  We  can  see  that  the  motives  in  one  scale 
pull  down  harder  than  in  the  other  mental  scale, 
and  yet  we  can  say — "I  will  not  decide  to-day. 
I  will  wait  till  to-morrow."  A  man  can  check 
the  immediate  action  which  is  prompted  by 
some  natural  but   wrongful  impulse.     He  can 


FATE.  OR  CHOICE  135 

give  the  excited  impulse  time  to  subside  and 
the  better  second  thought  of  reason  and  con- 
science time  to  be  heard,  and  at  a  selected  hour 
he  can  pull  the  trigger  of  the  will  and  dis- 
charge the  chosen  purpose  into  action  through 
the  muscular  mechanism. 

These  are  facts  of  which  we  are  directly  con- 
scious. They  are  also  necessary  implications 
of  the  universal  sense  of  personal  duty  and  our 
inescapable  feeling  of  responsibility  for  our 
moral  choices  and  actions.  All  our  instinctive 
feelings  of  remorse  for  our  own  wrong  acts  and 
all  our  impulses  of  indignation  at  careless,  base 
and  cowardly  conduct  assume  and  express 
(consciously  or  unconsciously)  this  power  of 
moral  choice  as  a  self-evident  truth.  For  if 
men  are  only  automata,  why  should  we  be  in- 
dignant at  the  assassin  or  the  despot  any  more 
than  at  a  torpedo ;  or  blame  the  liar  for  his 
lie  any  more  than  an  ill-regulated  watch  for 
pointing  its  hands  at  the  wrong  figure  on  the 
dial? 

If  a  man  has  consciously  yielded  to  a  temp- 
tation or  deliberately  chosen  to  commit  an  act 
of  injustice,  because  selfish  advantage  is 
thereby  to  be  gained,  he  feels  altogether  dif- 
ferently^ about  his  act  than  he  does  when,  ac- 
cidentally and  without  intent,  he  has  injured 
himself  or  another.  For  the  latter  sort  of 
conduct    we    do    not    hold    ourselves    culpable. 


136  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

And  this  clear  distinction  between  the  two 
classes  of  conduct  (the  bad  things  we  choose  to 
do  and  are  to  blame  for,  on  the  one  side,  and 
the  unintended  evils,  on  the  other  side,  for 
which  we  are  not  to  blame  nor  called  to  repent) 
is  confirmed  by  the  judgment  of  our  fellows, 
the  verdicts  of  courts  and  the  customary 
discriminations  of  all  modem  legislation.  In 
fact,  it  is  confirmed  by  the  universal  judg- 
ment of  mankind.  Yet  if  determinism  be 
true,  both  classes  of  acts  were  equally  exempt 
from  self-condemnation  or  regret.  The  uni- 
versal human  instinct,  however,  that  the  self- 
chosen  act  is  a  proper  subject  for  censure  and 
the  unintended  one  is  not  thus  censurable, 
clearly  implies  in  the  human  being,  who  feels 
his  responsibility,  a  power  of  choice.  Until 
men  shall  feel  that  an  attack  of  heart  disease 
or  a  steamboat  accident  is  as  blameworthy  a 
thing  for  its  victim  as  the  commission  of  a 
theft  is  for  its  perpetrator,  human  reason 
must  grant  to  normal  men  some  power  of  moral 
choice  and  refuse  to  accept  all  human  acts, 
without  distinction,  as  equally  inevitable  re- 
sults of  circumstance.  This  dominance  of 
mental  and  moral  choice  over  our  natural  dis- 
positions or  external  circumstances  is  a  fact 
admitted  by  leading  psychologists  and  by 
cautious  scientific  writers.  Authorities  of  the 
first  order  in  both  domains,  such  as  Professors 


FATE  OR  CHOICE  137 

Cope  and  William  James,  Rudolf  Eucken  and 
Sir  Oliver  Lodge,  acknowledge  this  power  of 
self-direction  and  option  amongst  the  inclina- 
tions urging  themselves  upon  the  self.  B3/ 
fixing  our  attention  on  that  class  of  remem- 
bered things  that  call  up  a  particular  motive, 
that  motive  may  be  made  to  prevail.  But  if 
we  divert  our  attention  and  fix  it  upon  an  op- 
posite set  of  considerations,  the  former  in- 
clination may  be  overshadowed  and  subdued. 
Even  one  who  was  so  inclined  to  the  automaton 
theory  of  human  nature  as  Prof.  Huxley  was 
obliged,  nevertheless,  to  admit,  that  "our  vo- 
lition counts  for  something  as  a  condition  in 
the  course  of  events."  "This  is  a  belief,"  he 
says,  "which  we  can  verify  experimentally  just 
as  often  as  we  wish  to  try;  and  it  therefore 
stands  on  the  strongest  foundation  on  which 
any  belief  can  rest."  If  there  are  those  who 
will  accept  neither  logical  demonstration  nor 
moral  inferences  nor  the  testimony  of  human 
consciousness,  but  demand  visible  observation 
of  the  mind's  control  over  matter  before  they 
will  believe  it,  there  is  an  interesting  scientific 
experiment  by  Prof.  Mosso  that  well  illustrates 
how  thought  can  move  matter.  In  a  large 
and  very  delicate  balance,  a  man  is  stretched 
out  in  an  horizontal  position  in  exact  equi- 
librium. Now  let  him  give  loose  rein  to  the 
lower  fancies   or  passions   or  empty  his  mind 


138  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

of  thought  as  entirely  as  he  can,  and  the  blood, 
passing  downward,  lowers  perceptibly  the  end 
of  the  scale  where  the  lower  part  of  the  body 
is.  But  now,  on  the  contrary,  let  the  man's 
mind  be  concentrated  intensely  on  some  logical 
argument  or  profound  calculation,  and  the  end 
of  the  balance  where  the  brain  lies  is  now  de- 
pressed, as  the  blood  is  summoned  by  the  mind 
to  that  opposite  end  of  the  scale.  The  ocular 
demonstration  of  the  soul's  control  of  its  or- 
ganism is  a  striking  one.  But  in  daily  life, 
the  principle  is  almost  momently  in  action. 
The  simple  explanation  of  that  fact  which  the 
determinist  so  persistently  emphasizes,  viz., 
that  the  act  of  volition  follows  the  preponder- 
ant motive  is  this,  that  this  motive,  in  any  case 
of  moral  indecision,  only  becomes  preponder- 
ant when  the  self  has  put  its  casting  vote  into 
the  mental  balance. 

I  am  well  aware  that  it  has  been  ob- 
jected that  a  violation  of  the  law  of  the 
conservation  of  energy  is  involved  in  thus 
supposing  the  psychic  self  to  lift  a  given 
desire  or  thought  into  the  field  of  attention 
where  it  becomes  a  source  of  nervous  and 
muscular  action.  But  in  point  of  fact,  noth- 
ing is  thereby  either  added  to  or  taken  from 
the  sum  total  of  physical  energy,  and  however 
mysterious  the  process  is,  it  does  not  violate 
any   physical   law.     A   mechanical   analogy   is 


FATE  OR  CHOICE  139 

furnished  by  the  law  that  when  a  directing 
energy  acts  at  right  angles  to  a  moving  body, 
it  may  deflect  its  course  without  altering  the 
stock  of  energy  in  the  body  acted  upon.  So 
the  self  may  alter  the  direction  of  the  nervous 
and  muscular  currents  without  conflicting  at 
all  with  the  law  of  the  conservation  of  energy 
or  other  mechanical  principle. 

As  to  this  materialistic  objection,  so  often 
urged,  that  a  selective  superintendence  by  the 
mind  over  the  impulses  pressing  upon  it,  con- 
flicts with  the  laws  of  cause  and  eff'ect  ruling 
everywhere  in  the  physical  world,  there  is  a 
direct  and  sufficient  answer.  It  does  not  con- 
flict with  them  for  this  plain  reason:  namely, 
that  the  selective  control  does  not  occur  within 
the  material  chain  of  antecedents  and  conse- 
quents. It  is  an  option  exercised  and  a  direc- 
tion given  wholly  within  the  psychic  world,  the 
realm  of  consciousness.  It  does  not  occur  un- 
der material  laws  nor  under  physical  coercion, 
but  under  mental  laws  and  through  moral 
forces.  The  laws  of  matter  and  of  mind  are 
radically  diverse.  Even  if  we  look  at  the  mat- 
ter from  the  standpoint  of  Monism  and  only 
permit  speech  of  the  objective  and  material  as- 
pects of  the  brain  in  distinction  from  the  subjec- 
tive aspects  of  the  psychic  activity,  these  two 
sets  of  laws,  the  objective  and  the  subjective, 
are  radically  dlff"erent.     In  the  material  or  ob- 


140  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

jective  realm  changes  occur  along  the  line  of 
least  resistance,  according  to  laws  of  quantita- 
tive continuity  and  connection.  In  the  mental 
realm,  on  the  contrary,  we  have  laws  of  selec- 
tion according  to  association  of  ideas,  moral  or 
logical  worth  and  pleasure  and  pain.  We  have 
conformity  to  ideals,  adherence  to  purpose,  in- 
telligent choice  and  rational  harmony.  Mate- 
rial energies  add  themselves  into  a  sum  of  the 
constituents,  or,  if  opposite  in  direction,  neu- 
tralize each  other  in  mean  resultants.  In 
the  mental  world,  on  the  contrary,  sensa- 
tions and  thoughts,  once  felt  as  distinct,  re- 
main as  distinct  and  when  recalled  do  not  re- 
appear as  a  sum  or  as  an  average,  but  reap- 
pear as  distinct  feelings  or  ideas.  Contrasted 
sensations  do  not  fuse  into  a  neutral  sensation, 
but  emphasize  each  other.  All  our  mental  life 
— memory,  judgment,  comparison,  deduction 
and  induction — all  depend  on  this  retention  in 
the  mind  of  those  contrasts  and  variations 
which  enable  clear  perception  and  reasoning  to 
be  carried  on.  In  all  the  higher  activities  of 
the  mind  the  laws  that  govern  physical  ener- 
gies are  reversed.  Through  this  radical  dif- 
ference between  the  psychic  laws  of  conscious- 
ness and  the  objective  laws  of  matter  and  phys- 
ical energy  it  is  evident  how  perfectly  pos- 
sible it  is  for  the  self  to  give  a  preference  to 
one  idea  over  another,  keeping  it  first  in  the 


FATE  OR  CHOICE  141 

field  of  attention  and  then,  by  an  act  of  vo- 
lition, releasing  the  nervous  discharge  in 
muscular  action  so  as  to  act  on  the  outer  world 
and  initiate  changes  there,  independent  and  un- 
determined by  circumstances  and  in  no  way 
inconsistent  with  physical  law  and  the  scien- 
tific conservation  of  energy.  Nevertheless, 
through  the  mysterious  connection  of  the  mind 
with  the  body,  this  change,  originated  by  the 
conscious  self,  in  the  act  of  willing,  moves  out- 
ward from  the  field  of  consciousness  with 
mighty  effect  into  the  social  and  material 
world. 

Among  living  savants  the  one  of  profoundest 
grasp  of  the  philosophical  bearings  of  modern 
science  is  the  distinguished  English  Professor 
of  Physics,  Sir  Oliver  Lodge.  In  his  book  on 
"Life  and  Matter"  he  has  emphatically  en- 
dorsed this  view  of  the  mastery  of  the  choos- 
ing self  over  circumstances.  "Guidance  and 
control,"  he  well  points  out,  "are  not  forms  of 
energy,  and  their  superposition  on  the  mate- 
rial and  dynamic  currents  need  perturb  neither 
physical  nor  mechanical  laws,  and  yet  it  may 
profoundly  affect  the  consequences."  While 
mental  associations  and  influences  stand  out- 
side the  material  chain  of  causation  and  have 
quite  different  laws,  yet  through  that  mystic 
intimacy  with  the  cerebral  organism  (which 
some   explain    as   a    constant   parallelism    and 


142  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

others  as  a  double  aspect),  the  physical  is 
made  amenable  to  spiritual  control  and 
the  daily  miracle  occurs,  by  which,  as 
Browning  says,  "Nor  soul  helps  flesh  now 
more  than  flesh  helps  soul."  This  dominance 
of  the  self  over  its  inclinations  and  acts 
is  a  scientific  as  well  as  a  psychic  and  moral 
fact. 

These  spiritual  forces  are,  indeed,  not  things 
that  are  tangible  or  visible  to  eye  of  flesh. 
Nevertheless,  they  are  facts,  demonstrated  by 
experiences  similar  to  those  that  authenticate 
many  of  the  energies  affirmed  by  science. 
Though  a  man  cannot  grasp  or  handle  them, 
let  him  violate  their  sacred  authority  and  how 
they  take  hold  of  him !  In  the  remorse  of  the 
transgressor,  and  in  the  melancholy  and  dis- 
satisfaction of  the  cynic  heart,  what  exhibition 
do  we  see  of  the  forces  that  are  denied!  From 
Dr.  Thomas  Hill  I  once  received  a  striking 
electrical  illustration  of  this  moral  power.  "If 
you  have  watched  a  dynamo  as  it  is  getting  to 
work,  you  have  doubtless  observed  how  easily 
the  core  of  balanced  magnets  revolves,  before 
the  current  begins  to  flow.  A  child  could  set 
the  core  turning.  But  when  the  light  begins 
to  flash  out  at  the  breaks  in  the  circuit,  then 
a  powerful  steam  engine  finds  that  it  has  all  it 
can  do  to  keep  the  magnets  revolving.  The 
energy  is  invisible.     But  its  existence  is  shown 


FATE  OR  CHOICE  143 

by  the  tremendous  resistance  required  to  over- 
come it." 

So  the  anguish  and  piercing  stings  of  the 
heart  which  sets  up  its  unscrupulous  selfishness 
against  the  sacred  laws  of  righteousness, — this 
suicidal  wrestle  of  men  with  conscience  and  this 
fatal  scorching  of  self-respect  and  honorable 
joy  in  the  secret  fires  of  moral  retribution, — 
how  tragically  do  these  experiences  of  over- 
ambitious  men  (all  too  common  as  they  are) 
exhibit  the  mighty  power  of  unseen  realities  in 
the  human  soul ! 

Through  this  sovereign  power  of  the  self  the 
reformed  drunkard  keeps  his  thirst  for  liquors 
in  check;  through  this  the  martyr  holds  his 
hand  unmoved  in  the  burning  flames ;  through 
this  the  decision  of  a  critical  hour  makes  or 
mars  the  career  of  the  genius.  By  this  moral 
choice  we  not  only  can  keep  at  bay  the  temp- 
tations to  vicious  indulgence,  carry  into  exe- 
cution our  nobler  aspirations  and  maintain  our 
moral  character,  uncontaminated  by  the  pres- 
sure of  the  world  about  us,  but  we  can  do  more 
than  this ;  we  can  elevate  and  ennoble  our  own 
characters.  We  can,  by  persisting  in  our  self- 
restraint  and  our  generous  aspirations  till  they 
become  habits,  alter  even  that  legacy  that 
heredity  has  left  us !  By  fixing  our  attention 
upon  our  sense  of  duty,  we  can  give  it,  if 
weak,  enhanced  power;  by  steadily  repressing 


144  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

our  sensual  inclinations,  we  wither  them  up,  at 
length,  close  to  the  root.  By  strengthening 
every  virtuous  effort  and  turning  our  thoughts 
more  and  more  from  the  low  plane  of  self-in- 
terest to  the  heavenly  visions  of  disinterested 
devotion  to  God  and  humanity,  we  can,  little 
by  little,  make  this  life  of  the  spirit  a  second 
nature,  and  lift  ourselves  up  into  spheres  of 
high  thought  and  purpose,  where  low  and 
sensual  pleasures  no  longer  even  attract  us. 
As  John  Stuart  Mill,  although  he  had  severely 
criticised  the  ordinary  presentation  of  the 
theory  of  free-will,  nevertheless  at  length  ad- 
mitted, "we  have  real  power  over  the  formation 
of  our  characters."  "  Our  will,"  the  great 
English  philosopher  acknowledged,  "by  influ- 
encing some  of  our  circumstances,  can  modify 
our  future  habits  and  capacities  of  willing." 

Through  this  self-modification  of  our  cus- 
tomary conduct  and  companions,  and  espe- 
cially by  the  altered  choice  of  our  prefer- 
ences and  resolutions  and  by  the  change 
in  the  respective  kind  of  stimuli  and  inclina- 
tions that  are  either  repressed  or  indulged, 
our  whole  mental  and  moral  environment  is 
altered.  The  great  world  about  us  may  best 
be  likened  to  an  echo  cliff,  that  gives  back  to 
us  (according  as  we  give  to  it)  music  or  dis- 
cord, and  songs  of  joy  or  groans  and  mur- 
murings    of    discontent,    magnified    into    long 


FATE  OR  CHOICE  145 

reverberating  waves  that  make  not  only  our 
own  weal  and  woe,  but  the  weal  and  woe  of  our 
neighbors  and  associates.  Happiness  begets 
happiness.  If  you  "would  have  the  best  come 
back  to  you,"  then  you  must  "give  the  world 
your  best." 

"Give  love — and  love  to  your  life  will  flow; 

A  strength  in  your  utmost  need; 

Have  faith;  and  a  score  of  hearts  will  show 

Their  faith  in  your  word  and  deed. 

Give  pity  and  sorrow  to  those  that  mourn; 

You  will  gather^  in  flowers  again 

The  scattered  seeds  from  your  thought  out-borne. 

Though  the  sowing  seemed  but  vain." 

The  supreme  fortune  teller  is  not  destiny 
but  character.  Every  great  man  who  has 
towered  high  above  his  generation  has  been  no 
pleasant  drifter  with  the  tide,  but  a  man  nota- 
ble for  his  resolute  will — a  man  who  has 
laughed  to  scorn  that  word  that  cows  the 
multitude,  "Impossible."  "Talk  not  to  me  of 
that  word,"  said  Mirabeau  (when  it  was  pre- 
sented as  a  final  bar  to  something  which  he  was 
determined  upon).  "Talk  not  to  me  of  that 
blockhead  of  a  word."  Before  men  of  such 
determined  spirit  mountains  crumble  to  mole- 
hills. 

The  key  that  unlocked  the  door  of  success 
for  Wagner   was   forged   of  the   same   metal. 


146  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

It  was  in  the  darkest  of  dark  days  in  Paris, 
when  he  was  bankrupt,  starving,  and  every 
leading  director  to  whom  he  appealed  for  a 
chance  to  be  heard  was  icy  marble  to  his  pray- 
ers, that  Wagner  wrote  in  his  journal  "Sic 
itur  ad  astra,"  and  by  his  indomitable  will  won 
his  way  to  the  operatic  throne  of  the  musical 
world. 

In  the  life  of  Frederick  Douglass  a  similar 
triumph  of  determined  will  over  opposing  cir- 
cumstances was  splendidly  exhibited.  Here 
was  a  man  born  in  bondage,  not  owning  as  a 
youth  his  own  body,  nor  allowed  to  learn  the 
alphabet,  except  by  stealth ;  pledged  before  his 
birth  for  his  master's  debts.  But  though  de- 
nied all  chance  of  education,  he  somehow 
learned  to  read  and  write,  and,  secreted  on 
shipboard  at  imminent  risk  of  death,  he  es- 
caped to  a  free  state,  and  before  many  years 
became  a  famous  lecturer  and  editor  and  the 
peer  of  any  man  in  the  country. 

Or  to  take  a  more  recent  instance,  recall  the 
account  that  Thomas  A.  Edison  has  given  of 
the  origin  and  conditions  of  his  remarkable 
scientific  inventions.  When  "the  modern 
wizard"  was  asked  if  their  source  was  in  bril- 
liant intuitions  that  came  to  him  indirectly  or 
through  accident,  he  stated  that  almost  never 
had  he  made  a  discovery  in  that  way.  "When 
I  have  finally  decided  that  a  result  is  worth  get- 


FATE  OR  CHOICE  147 

ting,  I  go  ahead  on  it  and  make  trial  after 
trial  until  it  comes.  Anything  I  have  begun 
is  always  on  my  mind  and  I  am  not  easy  while 
away  from  it  until  it  is  finished." 

Prof.  Ehrlich,  perhaps  the  greatest  medical 
discoverer  of  modern  times,  has  accomplished 
his  remarkable  achievements  in  a  similar  way. 
One  of  his  famous  chemical  compounds  that 
w^orks  unprecedented  cures  is  called  606.  But 
the  number  of  experiments  that  preceded  its 
discovery  is  said  to  have  been  nearer  6,000. 
As  it  was  once  so  expressively  said  by  Charles 
Darwin,  who  labored  forty  years  on  his  noted 
book,  "The  Origin  of  Species,"  forcing  himself 
unremittingly  through  days  of  constant  suffer- 
ing to  do  work  from  which  men  of  the  strong- 
est constitutions  would  have  shrunk:  "7^5 
dogged  that  does  it,'' 

Every  reader  who  looks  into  the  career  of  the 
great  men  of  the  United  States  finds  that  the 
university  where  almost  every  one  of  these 
noted  men  was  educated  was  the  little  red  dis- 
trict school,  and  the  home  in  which  he  was  born 
was  a  log  cabin  or  some  equally  humble  shelter. 

The  believer  in  luck  lazily  waits  for  some- 
thing fortunate  to  turn  up.  The  believer  in 
the  power  of  will  gets  up  at  dawn,  turns  up  the 
hidden  ore  with  industrious  hand  and  forges  it 
into  precious  metal. 

For  months  Delsarte  had  daily  besought  the 


148  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

theatrical  managers  for  just  one  opportunity 
to  appear  before  a  public  audience,  but  only 
to  be  angrily  rebuffed.  At  length,  one  stormy 
night,  the  manager  thought  he  would  end  his 
importunities  by  granting  him  the  chance  for 
which  he  had  begged.  Pointing  to  the  drop 
curtain,  he  told  Delsarte  that  in  a  minute  it 
would  go  up  and  he  might  try  what  he  could 
do.  On  its  rising,  a  beggar  in  ragged  garb 
advanced  to  the  footlights  with  the  air  of  a 
prince  and  began  his  role.  His  sweet  and 
clarion  voice,  his  graceful  bearing,  his  ex- 
pressive and  dramatic  gestures,  his  moving  play 
of  features  and  wonderfully  inspiring  person- 
ality soon  elicited  an  extraordinary  admiration 
and  the  audience  listened  spell-bound  until,  at 
the  magnificent  crescendo  of  the  dramatic  ef- 
fort, the  appreciative  hands  instinctively 
united  in  enthusiastic  applause.  When  Del- 
sarte left  the  theatre  that  night  it  was  with  a 
fine  engagement  which  showed  that  he  had,  to 
use  the  French  phrase,  "clearly  arrived." 

If  a  nearer  instance,  amidst  the  more  in- 
sidious and  less  romantic  moral  dangers  of  our 
own  land,  be  desired,  we  may  turn  our  eyes  to 
the  oozy  slums  of  New  York  City  that  engulf 
thousands  every  year.  Yet  even  here,  in  such 
a  career  as  that  of  Jere  McCauley,  the  founder 
of  that  most  beneficent  institution,  the  old 
"Water   Street  Mission,"  we  can   see   a   truly 


FATE  OR  CHOICE  149 

magnetic  illustration  of  the  power  of  a  re- 
generated will  to  overcome  the  down-drawing 
power  not  only  of  squalid  environment  but  also 
of  wretched  heredity  and  companionship.  For 
Jere  McCauley  had  been  the  companion  of 
thieves,  an  inmate  of  prisons  and  a  man  so  dis- 
couraged at  the  obstacles  in  his  way  to  leading 
a  decent  life  that  he  had  become  quite  hopeless 
of  his  power  to  reform  himself  until  the  sympa- 
thy and  aid  of  a  true  friend  nerved  him  to 
one  more  effort.  Sustained,  however,  by  this 
brotherly  faith  and  help,  he  turned  to  a  life 
of  honesty,  and  not  only  gained  the  white 
plume  of  virtue  for  himself,  but  established  a 
splendid  philanthropic  asylum  for  the  fellow- 
men,  beset  by  similar  temptations  and  adversi- 
ties. This  Water  Street  Mission  House  has 
now  become  world-famous,  and  there  is  not  a 
ship  that  sails  out  of  New  York  harbor,  it  has 
been  said,  which  does  not  have  on  it  some  man 
who  has  felt  its  influence  and  been  lifted  more 
or  less  to  a  cleaner  life  by  the  example  of  this 
former  jail-bird,  Jere  McCauley,  and  by  the 
equally  devoted  work  of  those  men  of  the  peo- 
ple who  have  been  his  successors  in  rousing  the 
latent  manhood  of  the  lowest  of  the  low  in 
America's  huge  maelstrom  of  temptation. 

Circumstances,  doubtless,  supply  the  mate- 
rial to  the  loom  of  life ;  and  if  they  give  no 
silk  or  velvet,  only  rough  wool  or  cotton,  we 


150  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

can  onlj  do  our  best  with  such  means  as  we 
have.  But  the  pattern  in  which  the  web  is 
woven,  coarse  or  chaste,  tawdry  or  beautiful, 
lies  with  each. 

Society's  commonest  failures  are  the  weather- 
cock folk.  The  psychic  dynamite  that  clears 
the  pathway  of  life  is  concentrated  energy.  A 
resolute  heart  can  turn  adversity  and  pain  into 
the  scarlet  robe  that  fittingly  adorns  a  princely 
soul.  It  can  transform  the  miry  environment 
of  temptation,  vice  and  tyranny  into  the  fruit- 
ful fertilizer  of  virtue's  spotless  lilies. 

As  Epictetus  demonstrated  how  virtue  wins 
a  brighter  grace  from  a  Nero's  foul  rule,  so 
Marcus  Antoninus  has  shown  us  (what  per- 
haps was  even  a  more  diflScult  achievement) 
that  even  in  a  Roman  palace  "life  may  be  well 
led."  So  far  from  a  Christian  life  being  an 
impossibility  among  the  degraded  and  the 
ferocious,  as  Herbert  Spencer  once  asserted, 
it  has  been  precisely  among  these,  even  amidst 
the  most  savage  and  cannibal,  that  the  mission- 
aries of  the  Gospel,  from  the  time  of  Ulfilas 
and  Boniface  to  that  of  Livingstone,  Pateson, 
and  the  heroic  saints  who  converted  the  Fijians 
from  cannibalism  to  Christianity,  have  ex- 
hibited the  most  lustrous  examples  of  fidelity  to 
Christian  principle. 

It  is,  to  be  sure,  no  child's  play  to  achieve 
these  moral  victories.     The  walls  of  our  mod- 


FATE  OR  CHOICE  151 

ern  Jerichoes  need  sometlimg  more  than  the 
blowing  of  rams'  horns  to  make  them  tumble 
down.  To  save  the  souls  of  fellowmen,  or  even 
to  save  one's  own  soul  in  the  slimy  underworld 
of  a  great  modern  metropolis  is  not  a  case  of 
slippered  ease.  It  requires  faith  in  God's 
world,  faith  in  the  dominant  soul  within  the 
most  degraded  and  faith  in  the  Fatherly  Good- 
will toward  all  the  children  of  the  human  race. 
"It  takes  some  fighting  to  win  a  fray."  And  to 
win  a  spiritual  battle  every  human  being  must 
be  able  to  bear  blows  of  adversity.  Men  and 
women  have  got  to  use  their  wits.  They  have 
got  to  control  their  passions ;  they  have  got 
to  sacrifice  pride  and  vanity ;  and  pay  virtue 
its  price  by  giving  up  oftentimes  ease,  com- 
fort and  worldly  advantages,  if  they  would 
come  off  unscathed.  But  any  man  that  values 
honesty  and  self-respect  more  than  money  or 
the  world's  favor  can  be  honest  and  clean  in 
life. 

In  the  pathetic  story  of  the  loss  of  the  mag- 
nificent steamship  Titanic  on  her  first  voyage 
across  the  Atlantic,  one  of  the  most  dramatic 
incidents  was  the  noble  conduct  of  the  ship's 
musicians.  Instead  of  deserting  their  posts  to 
get  early  seats  in  the  life-boats,  the  men  of 
the  steamer's  band  loyally  stood  shoulder  to 
shoulder  in  their  accustomed  places,  manfully 
playing  the  devotional  or  encouraging  hymns 


152  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

that  might  cheer  fearful  minds  or  console  the 
sad  hearts  of  the  passengers.  In  firm  and  un- 
broken ranks,  and  with  heroic  spirit,  they  con- 
tinued the  music  till  the  fatal  end  drew  near. 

In  the  equally  grave  perils  of  the  sea  of  life, 
when  the  billows  of  sin  and  crime  threaten  to 
engulf  the  lives  of  men  and  women,  is  there  not 
an  equal  call  on  every  one  to  make  his  human 
existence  "one  grand,  sweet  song,"  to  play 
the  chivalric  part  of  a  true  soldier  of  God  to 
the  very  end,  to  be  ready  to  sacrifice  life  itself 
to  maintain  clean  hands  and  a  pure  heart?  No 
man  determined  to  keep  his  fingers  from  steal- 
ing and  his  tongue  from  lying  need  steal  or 
lie.  No  woman,  firmly  resolved  to  keep  her- 
self chaste,  need  be  unfaithful  to  her  mar- 
riage vow.  They  are  sophists  and  base  de- 
famers  of  womanhood,  who  say  that  such  temp- 
tations are  so  natural  as  to  be  irresistible. 

Of  course,  the  mere  weak  desire  to  be  chaste, 
if  it  does  not  cost  much,  such  as  Thomas 
Hardy  has  portrayed  in  his  "Tcss  of  the 
D'Urbevilles"  (that  infamous  libel  on  a  really 
"pure  woman"),  is  a  poor  defence  against  the 
pressure  of  fleshly  passion.  When  a  woman's 
devotion  to  virtue  is  conditioned  on  easy  terms 
of  service,  exempt  from  such  demands  as  the 
sacrifice  of  her  pride,  or  her  jewels,  or  the  en- 
durance of  a  little  poverty,  such  virtue,  of 
course,  is  not  equal  to  resisting  the  temptations 
of   the   world.     This,   however,   is   no   genuine 


FATE  OR  CHOICE  153 

purity.  But  when  a  woman  is  resolutely  de- 
termined to  be  pure,  cost  what  it  may,  there  is 
always  a  way  of  escape  from  degradation. 
Even  a  Pompey,  unsupported  by  any  Chris- 
tian faith,  could,  for  honor's  sake  alone,  say, 
as  he  sailed  into  the  teeth  of  a  devouring  gale, 
"It  is  necessary  for  me  to  go, — it  is  not  neces- 
sary for  me  to  live."  Is  her  purity  of  less 
worth  to  a  Christian  woman  than  his  honor  was 
to  the  pagan  General?  Or  is  it  the  revival  of 
that  ignobler  Paganism  of  classic  days,  that 
materialistic  and  epicurean  philosophy  which, 
at  length,  consumed  the  manhood  of  the  Roman 
race — is  it  this  that  leads  so  many  to-day  to 
consider  bodily  comfort  in  this  life  the  only 
good  and  the  new  rule  of  right,  and  to  regard 
hunger  and  passion  as  justification  for  every 
crime,  and  thus  degrades  our  ideals  of  moral 
responsibility  far  below  the  level  of  ancient 
Stoicism  ? 

For  my  part,  I  am  not  ready  yet  to  sur- 
render either  my  higher  estimate  of  the  worth 
of  virtue,  my  faith  in  the  human  ability  to 
guard  that  virtue,  or  the  Providential  support 
that  is  given  to  every  struggling  soul.  I 
rather  say  with  loyal  John  Milton: 

"So  dear  to  Heaven  is  saintly  chastity 
That  when  a  soul  is  found  sincerely  so 
A  thousand  liveried  angels  lackey  her 
Driving  far  off  each  thing  of  sin  and  guilt." 


154  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

Let  us  remember,  however,  that  m  order  to 
receive  such  support  the  soul  ought  to  get  into 
some  intimate  connection  with  the  heavenly  cur- 
rents. The  common  human  will  needs  a  great 
deal  of  electrification. 

You  have  often  seen  a  group  of  birds  lazily 
resting  their  bodies  on  the  telegraph  wires, 
while  under  their  horny  claws,  all  unbeknown 
to  them,  momentous  messages  were  passing, 
pregnant  with  joy  or  tears,  the  loss  or  gain  of 
fortunes,  the  tidings  of  life  or  death. 

As  I  have  sat  amidst  some  gossiping  throng 
of  travelers,  while  they  sped  through  the 
grandest  of  Alpine  scenery  with  inattentive 
eyes,  or  listened  in  some  fashionable  church  to 
solemn  messages  of  eternal  import  and  noticed 
the  wandering  gaze  of  the  auditors,  interested 
chiefly  in  the  looks  of  the  tardy  incomers  and 
the  display  of  surrounding  millinery,  I  have 
thought  of  these  birds  on  the  telegraph  wires. 
How  insensible  are  average  men  and  women  to 
the  most  inspiring  beauties  of  Nature,  to  the 
noblest  functions  of  humanity  and  to  the  most 
vital  concerns  of  our  life! 

The  secret  of  human  power  lies  in  secuinng 
reinforcement  to  our  own  vacillating  will  from 
the  great  spiritual  forces.  When  the  electrician 
would  secure  for  his  wheels,  his  arclights  or 
dynamo  a  good  supply  of  the  magic  electric 
cnerg}^,    he    must    first    make    connection    with 


FATE  OR  CHOICE  155 

the  mysterious  cosmic  currents  and  then  keep 
that  connection  uninterrupted.      So  for  the  hu- 
man soul  to   obtain  co-operation  with  the  im- 
material energies  that  uplift  life  and  character, 
men  and  women  must  open  their  hearts  to  the 
great  streams  of  religious  inspiration  and  de- 
velopment   which    Nature,     society     and    the 
church  are   able  to   supply.     As   the  piece  of 
soft  iron  placed  within  the  electric  coil  may  be- 
come itself  a  magnet,  so  he  who  desires  for  him- 
self an  increase  of  spiritual  power  should  mag- 
netize himself  by  seeking  the  places  and  occa- 
sions where   this   power  descends.     He   should 
vivify  his  heart  through  the  elevating  services 
of  the  church,  and  the  fortifying  influences  of 
high-minded  companions.     He  should  cultivate 
that    trustful   receptivity   of   mind   that   gives 
free  inflow  to  the  spiritual  influences,  and  he 
should    accumulate    in    the   storage-battery    of 
his  memory  the  lofty  aspirations  of  the  saints 
and  the  grand  thoughts  of  the  prophets  of  all 
the  ages. 

Let  a  man,  especially,  face  his  conscience  un- 
shrinkingly, let  him  aspire  to  be  somewhat 
better  to-morrow  than  he  is  to-day  and  obey 
the  guidance  of  the  heavenly  vision,  though  it 
take  him  far  away  from  any  popular  road. 
If  there  is  one  conviction  above  all  others  that 
I  would  like  to-day  to  instill  into  the  minds  of 
our  young  people,  it  is  this :     "Do  not  yield  to 


156  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

these  popular  sophisms  which  make  you  an  *au- 
tomaton'  played  upon  by  the  fingers  of  chance." 
"All  that  most  ennobles  life,"  it  has  wisely  been 
said,  "is  all  your  own."  "All  that  would  de- 
base you,  can  hold  you  only  by  your  own  per- 
mission." He  who  abandons  his  God-given 
prerogative  as  helmsman  and  pilot  of  his  ship 
of  life,  to  let  the  currents  of  circumstance  drive 
him  as  they  chance,  drifts  inevitably  toward 
the  fatal  breakers.  He,  on  the  other  hand, 
who  keeps  his  own  hand  on  the  tiller  of  his  ship 
of  life  not  only  advances  daily  nearer  his  de- 
sired haven,  but  he  makes  the  very  head-winds 
and  cross-currents  further  his  purposes. 
Every  year  finds  the  electric  searchlight  of  con- 
science clearer  and  the  helm  of  resolution  more 
easily  guides  his  course.  Every  year  the  beams 
of  moral  principle  are  stauncher  and  the 
armor-plate  of  righteousness  is  more  impreg- 
nable. 

Every  victory  of  the  will  adds  to  the  domi- 
nant forces  and  habits  of  regnant  character. 
The  volitional  cords  are  no  entangling  bonds, 
uncoiled  by  sinister  Fates ;  they  are  living  mus- 
cles, whose  controlling  and  saving  power  grows 
stronger  by  daily  exercise.  It  may  be  that 
to  him  who  essays  this  life  voyage  across  the 
turbulent  waves  of  the  modern  world,  the  rays 
of  the  inner  light  seem  at  first  as  dim  and  shim- 
mering as  that  of  the  aurora  that  pulses  trem- 


FATE  OR  CHOICE  157 

ulously  in  the  winter  sky.  The  eye  of  flesh 
often  calls  these  rays  mere  illusions.  But  the 
moral  vision  that  can  turn  away  from  the 
glare  of  passion  and  befogging  custom  to 
look  upward  in  the  sobering  hours  of  grief, 
meditation  or  tragic  temptation,  finds  in  them 
the  signals  and  attendants  of  eternal  magnetic 
currents  that  stream  to  us  from  the  Divine 
Sun  of  Righteousness. 

As  the  wise  Greek  solved  the  old  logical  syl- 
logism which  proved  that  motion  is  impossible 
by  just  '^getting  up  and  walking,"  so  he,  who 
is  wise,  will  emancipate  himself  from  the  mod- 
ern puzzles  of  thought  and  pressures  of  en- 
vironment that  would  paralyze  our  will,  by  just 
exerting  his  voluntary  option,  promptly  and 
vigorously.  Whenever  any  one,  however  weak 
he  may  feel  himself  to  be,  has  any  sincere  long- 
ing to  have  his  nobler  aspirations  and  better 
thoughts  reign  over  his  life,  let  him  believe 
that,  as  they  are  the  best  and  the  noblest,  they 
must  possess  divine  truth  and  reality,  and  there- 
fore they  must  have  God's  power  and  all  na- 
ture's true  instincts  and  forces  behind  them. 
And  so,  as  a  loyal  child  of  God  and  patriotic 
member  in  the  great  brotherhood  of  humanity, 
let  him  act  up  to  these  higher  convictions. 

The  majesty  of  Eternal  Righteousness  is 
above  and  behind  each  faithful  soldier  who  an- 
swers to  the  trumpet  call  of  duty.     As  soon  as 


158  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

a  man  steps  above  those  insulating  stools  of 
selfishness  where  his  curious  nerves  only  receive 
useless  and  intermittent  shocks  or  as  soon  as  he 
makes  some  effective  connection  with  the  grand 
dynamic  currents  of  the  universe,  then  the  Di- 
vine electricities,  by  which  mortal  flesh  lives  and 
moves,  flow  into  and  through  him  and  carry 
him  onward  and  upward  with  an  energy  and  in- 
spiration vastly  more  than  mortal. 


CHAPTER  VIII 
OUR  SELF-MADE  WORLD 

I  once  heard  James  Freeman  Clarke  tell  of 
the  startlincr  contrasts  he  found  on  a  Missis- 
sippi  steamer  on  which  he  was  traveling. 

At  one  end  of  the  saloon  were  some  profes- 
sional gamblers  and  their  pals,  betting  on  their 
cards  and  filling  their  conversation  with  oaths. 
At  the  other  end  were  some  pious  Methodist 
men  and  women,  singing  their  popular  church 
hymns.  As  he  walked  up  and  down  the  saloon 
he  would  come  now  to  the  singers  and  catch  a 
few  words  of  their  songs  of  praise  and  trust ; 
and  then,  at  the  other  end  of  the  room,  he  would 
hear  the  cursing  and  coarse  jokes  and  laugh- 
ter of  the  gamblers ;  and  it  seemed  to  him  as 
though  he  were  walking  to  and  fro  between 
heaven  and  hell. 

How  often,  indeed,  are  heaven  and  hell  thus 
close  together.  Not  only  under  the  same  roof 
but  in  the  same  family  and  in  the  same  circle 
of  circumstances.  The  place  which  seems  to 
one  to  be  an  Inferno,  another  turns  into  a 
Paradise. 

When   the    crabs    and   mussels,    the   nautili, 

abalone  and  thousands   of  other  sea-creatures 

159 


160  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

built  their  houses  of  shell,  they  all  drew  from 
one  and  the  same  ocean  water  and  from  one 
and  the  same  stock  of  materials.  But  how 
widely  different  in  color  and  shape  the  encas- 
ing walls  that  the  diverse  species  built. 

So  the  life  material  for  boys  and  girls,  men 
and  women  is  very  much  the  same.  Each  se- 
lects that  for  which  he  has  an  affinity.  Of 
course  there  are  diversities  of  inheritance  and 
accidents  of  poverty  or  privilege  which  at  first 
constrain  us.  But  as  life  goes  on,  the  power 
of  environment  and  fate  grows  less ;  the  power 
of  character  grows  more;  and  the  coincidence 
between  our  surroundings  and  our  spirit,  and 
the  mastery  of  fortitude  over  fate  become  more 
complete.  In  the  long  run,  each  man  fashions 
his  own  world  and  incarnates  in  his  life  his  se- 
cret longings  and  ideas,  his  respective  virtues 
or  infirmities.  In  the  long  run  each  fills  his 
home  with  the  charm  and  sweetness  of  his  own 
personality  or  with  the  bitterness,  weakness  and 
discords  of  his  inner  nature.  For  happiness 
we  do  not  need  the  luxurious  furnishings,  the 
costly  pictures  and  gorgeous  apparel  which  to 
many  seem  its  sure  and  almost  indispensable 
sources.  Neither  can  a  life  of  leisure,  free 
from  every  duty,  and  an  uninterrupted  succes- 
sion of  gayeties  and  exciting  pleasure-bouts, 
where  every  day  is  a  festal  holiday,  ensure  it. 
The  excessive  ostentation  (as  soon  as  its  owner 


OUR  SELF-MADE  WORLD         161 

gets  accustomed  to  it)  becomes  a  burden.  The 
more  style  there  is,  the  more  stiffness  and 
dearth  of  good  fellowship.  Chronic  dissipa- 
tion or  steady  pleasure  seeking,  draining  the 
animal  vitality  and  closing  the  man's  career  to 
earnest  pursuits,  dries  up  the  sensibility  and 
stings  the  man  with  a  consciousness  of  wasted 
existence,  until  in  the  lower  and  lower  whirl- 
pools of  sensual  sensations,  the  vacuum  yawns 
again  more  drearily  than  ever  and  the  whole 
existence  becomes  a  bore.  Riches  can  no  more 
purchase  happiness  than  they  can  purchase  for 
a  school-girl  "the  capacity"  which  the  rich 
father  ordered  the  academic  principal  to  secure 
for  his  daughter  at  any  price. 

Are  there  not  hosts  of  men  and  women  in 
rude  cabins  in  back  alleys  or  in  huts  in  lonely 
wildernesses,  living  from  hand  to  mouth,  with- 
out any  of  those  pictures,  books,  entertain- 
ments or  comforts  which  make  what  you  and  I 
call  civilized  and  endurable  life,  yet  who  are 
serene  and  cheerful,  and  sing  the  song  of  the 
Lord  every  day  as  they  walk  their  path  of  con- 
tentment and  peace? 

And  do  you  not  know,  dear  reader,  multi- 
tudes of  other  men  and  women,  cushioned  with 
softest  comfort  and  encircled  with  every  lux- 
ury, their  walls  hung  with  trophies  of  art  and 
elegance  from  every  quarter  of  the  globe,  a 
retinue   of    servants    at   their   beck   and    every 


16S  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

privilege  that  rank  and  place  and  fortune  can 
endow  them  with,  who  yet  are  fretful  and  sor- 
did, chronic  grumblers,  a  burden  to  themselves 
and  to  all  around?  From  their  very  childhood 
they  have  been  heaping  up  money.  And  yet 
the  bigger  the  pile  grows,  the  poorer  they  feel, 
the  more  close-fisted  they  become,  the  less  they 
can  spare  to  help  any  worthy  cause  or  suffer- 
ing brother.  It  was  a  man  of  this  type,  many 
times  a  millionaire,  that  once  on  a  time,  when 
solicited  to  contribute  to  some  great  enterprise 
that  needed  to  be  done,  answered:  "I  cannot 
possibly  afford  to  give  a  cent.  Just  think  of 
it.  I  have  a  hundred  thousand  dollars  idle  in 
the  bank  that  is  not  drawing  a  cent  of  inter- 
est." 

Alas  for  the  soul-starved  creature,  haunted 
in  his  moneyed  poverty  with  the  fear  that  he 
might  yet  die  in  the  almshouse.  What  hum- 
blest day  laborer  is  not  better  off  and  daily 
getting  more  of  the  true  riches  of  existence? 

No  magic  of  thought,  of  course,  can  abolish 
either  disease  or  death.  But  excessive  brood- 
ing over  the  dark  things  of  life  certainly  deep- 
ens their  shadows.  He  who  thinks  "hope, 
cheer  and  health"  will  at  least  live  in  a  sunnier 
and  more  healthful  way  while  he  does  live  and 
will,  not  unlikely,  thereby  decidedly  prolong  his 
existence.  Thought  ought  to  become  more  of 
a  fine  art.     The  sculptors  and  painters  know 


OUR  SELF-MADE  WORLD         163 

that  if  they  keep  their  pupils'  attention  fixed 
on  rubbish,  they  will  never  carve  or  paint  any- 
thing but  rubbish.  The  art  teacher,  who 
should  fill  his  studio  with  all  the  mis-shapen 
statues  and  grotesque  and  badly  drawn  de- 
signs which  he  could  find  and  should  keep  his 
pupils  observing  them  all  day  long,  would  be 
set  down  by  every  one  as  doomed  to  failure,  if 
he  expected  to  get  any  good  and  harmonious 
designs  from  his  pupils. 

But  how  many  men  and  women,  in  the  direc- 
tion of  their  own  attention,  are  just  as  unwise. 
How  many  in  their  daily  poring  over  sorry  so- 
cial scandals,  in  their  tiresome  recounting  of 
domestic  trials  or  their  melancholy  dwelling  on 
all  the  maladies,  past,  present  and  prospective, 
that  have  come  or  may  come  to  themselves  and 
their  friends,  pursue  just  as  harmful  a  course. 

The  way  to  destroy  evil  is  not  to  keep  it  un- 
der the  microscope,  trying  to  see  all  its  horrid- 
ness  and  so  make  it  repulsive ;  but,  on  the  con- 
trary, we  should  put  it  outside  of  consciousness, 
superseding  it  by  some  suggestive  picture  of 
the  good. 

One  of  the  best  remedies  for  many  diseases, 
as  well  as  for  the  mistakes  and  stumblings  of 
our  youth,  is  simple  forgetfulness.  Look  for- 
ward to  the  better  day,  and  the  old  cramps  and 
congestions  fade  away.  Too  often  we  hear  the 
expression  in  regard  to  some  wrong  received: 


164*  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

"I  can  forgive  it,  but  I  cannot  forget  it."  On 
the  contrary,  not  until  you  can  forget  it  do 
you  really  forgive  it.  You  only  say  so ;  but 
the  brand  is  on  your  mind.  Only  when  with 
the  salve  of  love  and  pity  we  cleanse  and  heal 
our  memory,  do  we  get  rid  of  its  moral  inflam- 
mation. 

Similarly,  one  of  the  mistakes  of  our  social 
and  political  reformers  Is  their  pessimism. 
They  fancy  they  must  paint  the  whole  sky 
black,  without  one  glimmering  star  of  good  in 
sight,  before  the  people  can  be  roused  to  ac- 
tion. But  unless  some  star  of  hope  does  shine, 
why  should  the  people  bestir  themselves?  Un- 
less the  very  pessimist  has  a  vision  and  a 
prophecy  of  a  possible  better,  why  should  he 
revolt  at  the  seamy  side  of  things?  Despair 
and  doubt  are  never  creative.  It  is  only  faith 
that  moves  the  world  forward. 

The  older  Romantic  writers  dwelt  so  exclu- 
sively on  the  ideal  and  the  dramatic  that  their 
roseate  sketches  seemed  far  removed  from  the 
realities  of  common  life. 

The  Naturalistic  writers  of  to-day,  on  the 
plea  of  getting  the  naked  truth,  strip  the  poor 
victims,  whom  they  study,  of  the  very  flesh,  to 
present  us,  in  the  bare  bones,  a  picture  quite 
as  arbitrary  and  misleading. 

The  pessimism  which  saturates  a  great  deal 
of  modern  art  and  letters  is  a  defamation  of 


OUR  SELF-MADE  WORLD         165 

the  race.  It  is  an  invitation  to  surrender. 
He  who  goes  to  the  battle  of  Hfe  with  no  better 
cry  than :  "All  our  leaders  have  been  mistaken ; 
the  old  faiths  were  lies ;  and  man's  cause  is  al- 
ready doomed,"  such  a  man  will  never  win  a 
victory.  Few  things  spread  more  contagiously 
than  cowardice.  But  when  the  brave  are  in 
command,  it  is  easy  to  charge  the  flaming  line ; 
it  is  easy  even  to  die.  More  than  royal  shows 
and  riches  or  any  social  Utopia,  men  need 
health,  not  merely  health  of  body  but  the  finer 
health  of  mind,  the  sanity  to  know  the  deeper 
realities  which  the  surface  only  hides,  and  the 
serene  courage  which  such  clear  vision  gives. 
Look  calmly  at  these  sullen  clouds  of  fate  at 
which  we  rail  and  how  often  we  find  that  they 
are  no  storm  clouds,  after  all — only  dust,  fog 
and  smoke  of  our  own  raising. 

There  are  those  who,  when  misfortune  or  be- 
reavement has  come  to  them,  have  made  it  the 
center  of  their  landscape.  They  have  magni- 
fied it  and  become  enshadowed  by  it,  forgetting 
the  living  and  their  needs,  forgetting  that  any 
others  beside  themselves  have  suffered.  And 
there  are  others  who,  through  the  same  or 
equally  heavy  afflictions,  have  been  exalted  and 
ennobled.  Li  the  deep  waters  of  their  bereave- 
ment they  have  been  cleansed  of  earthly  ambi- 
tions and  worldly  discontents ;  and  the  cross 
which  they  carry  has  become  an  inspiration  of 


166  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

sympathy,  help  and  tenderness  to  every  fellow 
sufferer  to  whom  they  could  bring  a  gleam  of 
comfort  or  spiritual  strengthening.  What  lot 
so  dark  that  in  it  there  is  no  gleam  of  sun- 
shine? "Put  that  gleam  of  sunshine  in  the 
center,"  it  has  well  been  said,  "as  Rembrandt 
did  in  his  pictures,  and  the  shadows  shall  be- 
come subordinate  to  it." 

Do  you  ever  ask  yourself  why  it  is  that  the 
things  that  seem  to  us  hurtful  are  not  kept  by 
Providence  beyond  our  reach.?  "It  must  be," 
as  Lowell  said  with  as  much  wit  as  wisdom, 
"that  the  framework  of  the  universe  is  fire- 
proof, or  the  Almighty  would  not  have  left  so 
many  Lucifer  matches  lying  around  loose." 
The  fires  that  they  light  are  wholesome  cleans- 
ers. No  possession  is  so  valuable  as  self- 
possession. 

In  every  town  in  which  I  have  ever  lived  the 
people  who  were  most  discontented  and  un- 
happy were  people  who  in  worldly  goods  were 
well-to-do  and,  in  most  cases,  had  hardly  any 
serious  burdens  to  carry.  Consequently  they 
had  plenty  of  time  to  give  themselves  up  unre- 
strainedly to  worrying  over  their  own  precious 
selves.  Such  is  the  case  with  almost  all  pessi- 
mists. Take  their  great  modern  apostle, 
Schopenhauer,  the  man  who  maintained  that 
this  world  was  "the  worst  possible  world,"  for 
if  it  had  been  any  worse,  it  could  not  possibly 


OUR  SELF-MADE  WORLD         167 

have  held  together  and  kept  running.  His 
big  philosophic  tomes,  his  private  letters  and 
his  daily  conversation  were  one  continuous 
growl  against  life.  Human  society,  he  de- 
clared, is  "an  arena  of  agonized  and  tormented 
beings  who  subsist  only  by  devouring  one  an- 
other— a  hell  surpassing  Dante's  in  this:  that 
each  one  must  be  the  Devil  and  tormentor  to 
some  fellow  sufferer." 

"The  greatest  of  misfortunes  is  birth." 
"The  only  good  is  death,  and  the  only  truth 
in  the  Old  Testament — the  one  thing  that  has 
redeemed  the  book — is  the  account  of  the  Fall 
of  man  and  the  ruin  of  Paradise." 

One  naturally  infers  that  the  life  experiences 
that  reflected  themselves  in  such  hatred  of  ex- 
istence must  have  been  terribly  tragic.  On  the 
contrary,  Schopenhauer  was  a  man  of  comfort- 
able fortune,  fine  social  position  and  a  good 
appetite,  who  dined  well  every  day  at  the  best 
hotel  in  Frankfort  and  had  carefully  avoided 
the  usual  domestic  cares  and  responsibilities,  by 
forswearing  the  sex  whom  he  called  "the  un- 
reasonable half  of  humanity,"  and  devoting  his 
whole  thought  and  income  to  promoting  his  own 
bachelor  comfort  and  personal  enjoyment. 
He  had  not  a  single  necessary  care  nor  had  he 
ever  received  any  serious  blow  from  fortune. 
His  unhappiness  was  due  solely  to  his  own 
selfish  indulgences  and  isolation  and  his  bitter 


168  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

scorn  of  his  fellows.  It  was  the  fault  of  his 
imaginary  suspicions,  icy  pride  and  the  self- 
inflicted  wounds  of  his  insatiable  vanity. 

Contrast  with  him  another  of  the  great  fig- 
ures of  history.  Let  us  take  one  on  whom 
cruel  fortune  really  had  poured  its  worst 
blows,  a  man  bom  in  the  humblest  rank  of  life, 
sickly  in  constitution  and  deformed  in  person, 
in  early  childhood  sold  into  slavery  to  a  tyran- 
nical Roman  master,  his  days  passed  in  the 
slave  quarters  where  great  gangs  of  wretched 
creatures  were  crowded  together,  liable  to  the 
most  capricious  punishments,  subjected  to  the 
most  degrading  influences  and  cut  off^  from  op- 
portunities of  knowledge  and  from  all  chance 
of  rising  in  the  world.  If  misery  is  sure  to 
develop  pessimism  in  its  victim,  if  circum- 
stances make  or  unmake  the  man,  surely  this 
brutalizing  environment  should  have  forced  this 
poor  suff*erer  to  a  life  of  the  saddest,  lowest, 
most  animal  and  ignoble  kind. 

But  history  has  quite  a  difl'erent  story  to 
tell.  History  tells  us  that  he  was  distin- 
guished for  his  serene,  cheerful,  exalted,  un- 
movedly  patient  spirit — in  fact,  for  his  uncom- 
plaining and  grateful  spirit.  He  was  one  whose 
expressions  of  resignation  and  faith  in  God's 
good  Providence  have  a  heartiness  and  lyric 
beauty  almost  unparalleled  in  literature.  This 
was  the  man  who  wrote  'Hhe  great  world  is  not 


OUR  SELF-MADE  WORLD        169 

made  for  my  individual  satisfaction.  Must 
my  leg  be  lame?  Slave — for  the  sake  of  one 
miserable  little  leg  do  you  find  fault  with  the 
universe?  Will  you  not  cheerfully  assent  to 
this  burden  for  the  sake  of  Him  who  gave  it? 
*Great  is  God,'  we  ought  to  sing,  because  He 
hath  given  us  hands,  and  means  of  nourish- 
ment and  unconscious  growth  and  breathing 
sleep.  And  since  the  most  of  you  are  blinded 
to  these  gifts,  ought  there  not  to  be  some  one, 
on  behalf  of  all,  to  sing  this  hymn  to  God. 
And  what  else  can  I  do,  who  am  an  old  man 
and  lame,  than  sing  such  hymns?  Had  I  been 
a  nightingale,  I  should  have  sung  the  hymns 
of  a  nightingale.  But  being  a  reasonable  be- 
ing, it  is  my  duty  to  sing  the  hymns  due  unto 
God.  This  is  my  task  and  I  accomplish  it ; 
nor,  so  far  as  may  be  granted  to  me,  will  I  ever 
abandon  this  post,  and  I  exhort  you  also  to 
this  same  song  of  praise."  Think  of  that ! 
A  slave,  maimed  in  body,  a  beggar  in  poverty, 
yet  thus  "soaring  aloft  like  a  skylark  in  such 
a  melodious  outburst  of  thanksgiving."  Think 
of  that,  ye  Sybarites,  fuming  on  your  couches 
of  roses  whenever  you  find  one  crumpled  petal 
beneath  your  irritable  nerves.  "No  wonder," 
it  has  well  been  said,  "that  they  wrote  for  his 
epitaph  that  this  Epictetus,  poor,  maimed  and 
a  slave,  as  he  was,  nevertheless  is  'dear  to  the 
immortal  Gods.'  " 


170  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

How  could  Epictetus,  do  you  ask,  thus  ig- 
nore all  the  hardships  and  miseries  of  his  lot? 
Because  he  had  early  come  to  see,  as  he  him- 
self said,  that  "he  is  a  slave  whose  soul  is 
bound,  though  his  body  be  free ;  but  he  is 
free  whose  soul  is  free,  though  his  body  be 
bound." 

It  should  be  recognized,  of  course,  that  there 
are  abnormal  specimens  of  humanity  (or  per- 
haps we  better  say  "animals  in  anthropomor- 
phic guise")  who  seem  to  possess  neither  reason 
nor  conscience.  With  such  "the  Gods  contend 
in  vain,"  as  a  German  proverb  says.  But 
wherever  humanity  is  in  its  normal  state  it  sees 
the  right.  And  where  a  man  or  woman  sees  an 
act  to  be  right  and  its  converse  to  be  wrong, 
the  moral  power  "to  choose  that  right  and  to 
do  it,"  is  present  with  him.  This  self-deter- 
mining power  changes  to  each  man  the  whole 
hue  of  the  world  and  the  whole  weight  of  its 
temptations,  just  as  when  one  puts  a  rose- 
tinted  pane  in  the  place  of  a  blue  sheet  of  glass 
in  looking  on  a  landscape. 

More  than  this,  it  remoulds  character  it- 
self. History  tells  us  how  strong  originally 
was  the  sensual  element  in  Socrates  and  how 
fiery  was  the  native  temperament  in  Washing- 
ton. History  also  tells  us  how  in  both  of  these 
distinguished  men  these  faults  were  restrained 
and  at  length  conquered  by  persevering  self- 


OUR  SELF-MADE  WORLD         171 

control.  Even  for  the  incipiently  insane,  mod- 
ern phj^sicians  urge,  as  the  most  important 
measure  for  their  recovery,  that  the  patient 
shall  believe  that  he  can  control  himself  and 
shall  strive  to  the  utmost  to  realize  that  faith. 
By  this  voluntary  self-restraint  many  in  the 
early  stages  of  insanity  are  now  recovered  to 
mental  health. 

Where  there  Is  spiritual  vitality  it  needs  no 
fat  environment  for  its  growth,  but  it  will  draw 
life  and  succulence  and  beauty  out  of  the  stoni- 
est field.     When  a  man's  will  is  firmly  set  on 
the  cleansing  and  refinement  of  his  soul,  even 
censure  and  reproofs  are  things  to  be  thankful 
for.     "I   am   a  happy   man,"   cries   Confucius, 
"for  when  I  have  a  fault,  men  observe  it ;  and 
so  I  get  rid  of  it."     Failure,  pain,  bereavement, 
death  become   to   him   who    seeks   Divine   light 
but  the  emery  wheels  that  polish  the  lens  of  his 
soul  to  that  clearness  where  the  stars  of  Divine 
truth  and  love  shine  on  him  full-orbed — a  re- 
ward worth   all  that  it   has   cost.     When   the 
noble  martyr  Perpetua  was  sent  to  prison  for 
engaging  in  Christian  worship,  she  cried  out: 
"This    dungeon    is    to    me    a    Paradise."     The 
record  of  the  unjust  conviction  of  Socrates  by 
his  fellow  citizens  for  alleged  impiety  and  his 
consequent    sentence    to    death    is    one    of    the 
blackest  pages  in  the  history  of  Athens.     But 
It  gave  to  the  historic  roll  of  immortal  sayings 


172  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

that  famous  reply  of  the  calm-minded  philoso- 
pher, "Wherefore,  O  Judges,  be  of  good  cheer 
about  death.  Know  this  of  a  certainty,  that 
no  evil  can  happen  to  a  good  man,  either  in 
life  or  death.  He  and  his  are  not  neglected  by 
the  gods.  But  I  see  clearly  that  to  die  and  be 
released  is  better  for  me.  Therefore  the  ora- 
cle gave  no  sign.  For  which  reason  I  am  not 
angry  with  my  accusers  or  my  condemners. 
They  have  done  me  no  harm." 

Or  to  quote  a  third  and  equally  noble  answer 
by  an  equally  noble  spirit,  let  me  recall  the 
serene  words  of  that  great  philosopher  and 
savant  of  Rome,  Giordano  Bruno,  when  con- 
demned to  death  by  the  Inquisition  for  the 
crime  of  thinking  for  himself.  Asked  by  his 
Papal  Judges  at  the  close  of  the  farcical  trial, 
through  which  he  had  passed,  if  he  had  any 
plea  to  offer  why  sentence  of  death  should  not 
be  pronounced  upon  him,  he  boldly  answered: 
"I  believe  this  sentence  is  more  a  cause  of  trem- 
bling to  you  than  it  is  to  me." 

What  can  fate  with  its  worst  blows  avail 
against  such  a  spirit?  Even  the  threat  of  hell 
itself  cannot  daunt  or  turn  a  soul  like  that. 
He  who  robes  himself  in  sincerity  and  right- 
eousness would  pass  through  its  fire  and  brim- 
stone as  Daniel  and  his  companions  passed 
through  the  fiery  furnace.  To  the  Divine  des- 
pot   whom    Christian    superstition    makes    the 


OUR  SELF-MADE  WORLD         173 

jailer  and  torturer  of  the  unorthodox  believer 
and  the  independent  thinker,  the  soul  that 
knows  its  own  purity  can  say,  "I  shall  reach 
my  end  and  keep  my  peace  of  mind,  despite 
you  and  your  eternal  prison.  In  your  lowest 
hell  I  shall  find  opportunities  of  noblest  life — 
a  chance  there  for  patience,  sympathy,  noble 
helpfulness  and  Christian  charity.  For  even 
down  there  in  hell  I  can  do  two  things,  which 
thou,  dread  God  of  superstition,  aloft  in  thy  icy 
heaven,  canst  not  do.  /  can  pity  and  I  can 
pardon.  Thou  canst  not  forgive  me,  but  / 
can  forgive  even  theeJ*  And  it  will  not  re- 
quire the  presence  of  many  such  lofty  souls  in 
hell  (as  Father  Taylor  suggested  when  Emer- 
son was  consigned  there  by  the  bigots  of  his 
day)  "to  begin  very  materially  to  ameliorate 
the  climate  and  turn  the  current  of  emigration 
that  way." 

But  let  us  not  so  dishonor  God  as  to  tolerate 
the  thought  that  he  can  be,  even  for  an  hour, 
the  enemy  of  the  righteous.  For  they  are  his 
beloved  children.  He  stands  always  as  their 
supporter  and  Almighty  Ally.  And  he  who 
holds  his  hands,  who  fights  under  his  banner, 
shall  surely  conquer,  soon  or  late.  The  con- 
fidence of  our  American  poet  *  who  sang  so 
trustfully  of  the  Eternal  Will  was  not  one  whit 
too  great. 

*  Ella  Wheeler  Wilcox. 


174i  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

"There  is  no  thing  we  cannot  overcome. 

Say  not  thy  evil  instinct  is  inherited. 

Or  that  some  trait  in-born,  makes  thy  whole  life 

forlorn, 
And  calls  down  punishment  that  is  not  merited. 
Back  of  thy  parents  and  grandparents  lies 
The  great  Eternal  Will.     That  too  is  thine 
Inheritance, — strong,    beautiful,    divine ; 
Sure  lever  of  success,  for  one  who  tries. 

Pry  up  thy  fault  with  this  great  lever — Will. 
However  deeply  bedded  in  propensity, 
However  firmly  set,  I  tell  thee,  firmer  yet 
Is  that  vast  power  that  comes  from  Truth's  im- 

mensitv. 
Thou  art  a  part  of  that  strange  world,  I  say. 
Its  forces  lie  within  thee;  stronger  far 
Than  all  thy  mortal  sins  and  frailties  are. 
Believe  thyself  divine  and  watch  and  pray. 

There  is  no  noble  height  thou  canst  not  climb. 
All  triumphs  may  be  thine  in  Time's  futurity. 
If, — whatso'er  thy  fault,  thou  dost  not   faint   or 

halt 
But  lean  upon  the  staff  of  God's  security. 
Earth  has  no  claim  the  soul  cannot  contest. 
Know  thyself  part  of  the  Supernal  Source, 
And  naught  can  stand  before  thy  spirit's  force. 
The  soul's  divine  inheritance  is  best." 


CHAPTER  IX 

PARTNERS  IN  WORLD-MAKING 

When  the  making  of  the  world  is  spoken  of 
the  general  understanding  is  that  we  refer  to 
a    Divine    work,    long    ago    completed.     The 
Church,   in   accordance  with   the  traditions   of 
the  book  of  Genesis,  has  regarded  Creation  as 
the  tour  de  force  of  a  few  days  of  intense  ac- 
tivity on  the  part  of  God,  at  the  close  of  which 
the  Maker  of  the  earth  and  heavens  rested  from 
his   labors    and   reviewed   what   he   had   accom- 
plished and  pronounced  all  to  be  good.     Many 
religious  people  have,  therefore,  considered  the 
idea  that  man  could  do  anything  to  improve 
the    world    as    a    supposition    showing    disre- 
spectful   doubt    of    the    perfection    of    God's 
creation.     When     in     the     last     century     the 
proposition  to  dig  the  Erie  Canal  was  before 
the  public  a  devout  member  of  a  religious  so- 
ciety objected  to  it  on  the  ground  that  such  an 
enterprise  was   a   reflection   on  the  Providence 
of  God.     Even  so  acute  a  thinker  as  John  Stu- 
art   Mill    once    characterized    "the    feeling    of 
helping  God*^  as  a  feeling  inconsistent  with  the 
belief  in  the  omnipotence  of  the  Divine  Good- 
ness.    Where   faith  in   the  All-Wise   and  All- 

175 


176  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

Powerful  has  been  strong,  it  has  often  thus  been 
so  sure  that  God  does  not  need  us  and  that  his 
finished  world  can  only  be  meddled  with  by 
man  to  its  injury,  as  to  paralyze  human  effort 
and  to  promote  indolence,  indifference  to  evil 
and  a  fatalistic  apathy. 

In  these  latter  days  this  unfortunate  ten- 
dency has  been  fortified  by  the  popular  scien- 
tific ideas  of  the  period,  especially  by  the  in- 
discriminating  and  extreme  assertions  current 
as  to  the  invariability  of  Nature's  order. 

The  fundamental  verity  which  this  scientific 
phrase  expresses  has  been  exaggerated  into 
the  fallacy  that  human  beings  cannot  alter 
the  direction  of  their  course  or  help  or  hinder 
the  mighty  currents  of  Nature.  With  the 
Persian  poet,  Omar  Khayyam,  men  are  viewed 
as  the  puppets  of  destiny  who 

"Upon  this  checker-board  of  nights  and  days; 
Hither  and  thither  moves   and  checks   and  slays, 
And  one  by  one,  back  in  the  closet  lays." 

But  this  view  of  the  irresistible  fixity  and 
finality  of  Destiny  and  the  consequent  super- 
fluousness  of  human  activity  is  neither  good 
religion  nor  good  science.  There  is  not  only 
a  Divine  Providence,  but  there  is  a  human 
providence.  Revering  God,  as  we  must,  as  the 
first  Creator,  we  ourselves  have  a  task  laid 
upon   us  by  the  Author   of  our   being  as  the 


PARTNERS  IN  WORLD-MAKING     177 

second  creator  and  finisher  of  the  Divine  handi- 
work. 

It  is  this  sacred  partnership  of  earth's  Kv- 
ing  creatures  with  their  Creator  that  I  wish 
to  set  forth  in  this  chapter.  Especially  do  I 
wish  to  emphasize  the  important  part  that  man 
himself  plays  in  the  great  drama  of  evolution. 
I  would  like  every  one  to  feel  that  not  only  does 
he  need  God,  but  God  needs  him  to  accomplish 
in  due  season  his  grand  designs. 

Certainly,  all  the  laws  of  matter  and  force, 
of  mind  and  society  are  constant.  That  is 
to  be  acknowledged.  But  equally  is  it  to  be 
acknowledged  that  they  are  all  conditional. 
In  every  case  we  must  sow  before  we  reap ;  we 
must  seek  before  we  find.  The  law  itself  is 
constant,  but  the  application  of  it  has  an  in- 
finite diversity  of  relations  and  corresponding 
varieties  of  consequences.  If  we  are  to  get 
good  and  not  evil  from  Nature's  forces,  we 
must  obey  them ;  but  when  we  obey  them  wisely 
and  tactfully  we  become  their  masters.  It  is 
impossible  to  alter  the  law  of  gravitation  that 
all  bodies  are  drawn  down  toward  the  earth  in 
direct  proportion  to  their  respective  masses 
and  in  inverse  proportion  to  the  square  of  the 
distance.  But  by  enclosing  in  a  silk  bag  a 
sufficient  quantity  of  hydrogen  gas,  this  very 
law  becomes  the  means  of  lifting  the  aeronaut 
into    the    skies.     Confine    superheated    steam 


178  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

within  a  rigid  enclosure  and  it  becomes  one  of 
the  most  destructive  of  forces.  No  most  fer- 
vent prayer  of  saint  or  priest  will  prevent  it 
from  dealing  ruin  about  it.  But  add  to  the 
boiler  a  piston  and  suitable  valves,  and  it  be- 
comes man's  most  useful  of  servants — hauling, 
printing,  sewing,  reaping,  doing  whatsoever  he 
wills.  Though  we  cannot  destroy  nor  create 
a  single  particle  of  matter  nor  set  aside  a  sin- 
gle one  of  the  inexorable  laws  of  the  Universe, 
we  can  thus,  by  skill  and  contrivance,  so  com- 
bine them  as  to  make  them  our  slaves ;  we  can 
compel  the  opposing  winds  to  waft  us  to  our 
goal  and  twist  the  rectilinear  waves  of  light 
this  way  and  that  with  our  prisms  and  mirrors. 
We  can  make  the  dividing  seas  our  channels 
of  communication,  the  intangible  ether  our 
messenger  boy,  and  the  very  lightnings  our 
draft-horses  and  household  candles. 

There  is  a  field,  then,  left  by  God  himself 
for  man's  moulding  and  creative  powers.  It 
is  a  field  in  which  man  is  needed,  and  in  which 
he  continually  intervenes  either  for  good  or  for 
evil. 

"In  the  beginning,"  wrote  the  Hebrew  bard, 
"God  created  the  heavens  and  the  earth."  The 
essential  thought  of  the  ancient  worshipper,  as 
he  sang  his  noble  psalm  of  creation  in  that' 
grand  first  chapter  of  Genesis,  was  a  true  and 
a  noble  one.     In  the  light  which  modern  science 


PARTNERS  IN  WORLD-MAKING     179 

has  thrown  upon  it,  It  is  not  less  sublime  than 
in  that  simpler,  child-like  form  in  which  the 
fancy  of  the  early  singer  depicted  It.  What 
ancient  hymn  more  beautiful,  more  poetical, 
than  this  modern  scientific  story  of  the  cosmic 
genesis,  whose  universal  and  orderly  processes 
have  evolved,  not  alone  our  own  little  satellite, 
but  all  these  other  suns  and  attendant  planets 
that  beam  so  kindly  on  us  from  the  skies 
through  the  silent  watches  of  the  night? 

How,  out  of  some  formless  sea  of  neubulous 
matter,  stretching  out  beyond  the  farthest 
planetary  orbits,  was  shaped  each  glowing 
solar  orb !  Through  the  long  cycles  of  inor- 
ganic transformation,  the  Creative  Spirit, 
brooding  over  the  deep  and  shaping  the  majes- 
tic outlines  of  mountain,  continent  and  sea, 
worked  in  a  profound  and  mighty  isolation. 
But  as  soon  as  evolution  mounted  to  the  stage 
of  life,  these  animated  creatures,  however  hum- 
ble, began  to  take  part  In  the  creative  work. 
Darwin  and  his  disciples  have  shown  us  what 
an  important  influence  on  the  soil,  in  lighten- 
ing, enriching  and  preparing  It  for  higher 
vegetable  forms,  even  the  lowly  earthworm  has 
exerted. 

Modern  botanists  have  demonstrated  that 
the  humble  rootlets  of  plants,  shrubs,  and 
weeds,  often  from  twenty  to  forty  feet  in 
length,    have    been    even    more    effective    than 


180  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

the  worms  in  fertilizing  and  preparing 
the  earth-mould  for  prosperous  growth  of  flow- 
ers and  fruit  trees.  The  huge  chalk  cliffs  of 
England  and  the  immense  limestone  beds  of  our 
Southern  states  are  built  out  of  the  minute 
shells  of  extinct  multitudes  of  sea-creatures  and 
are  imperishable  monuments  to  the  mighty 
constructive  power  of  these  lowly  forms  of  life. 

Amongst  the  earliest  contributions  to  the 
making  of  our  earth  by  living  creatures  was 
the  extraction  from  the  atmosphere  of  its  car- 
bonic acid  by  the  ferns  and  similar  plants  of 
the  Carboniferous  and  earlier  epochs  and  the 
deposit  of  great  beds  of  graphite,  coal,  and 
other  forms  of  carbon  in  the  ancient  strata 
where  they  are  found.  Quite  as  early  per- 
haps was  the  manufacture  of  petroleum  and 
similar  deposits  by  the  sea-algae;  and,  then, 
later  on,  the  pea  and  vetch  family  began  to 
extract  from  the  atmosphere  the  nitrogen, 
which,  in  so  many  compounds,  is  invaluable  in 
vegetable  and  animal  growth. 

As  low  do'WTi  in  the  scale  of  life  as  the  Micro- 
organisms, there  is  (as  Prof.  Binet  has 
shown),  "psychic  life  and  choice"  as  to  what 
is  liked  or  disliked,  and  there  is  effort  to  secure 
what  is  wanted  and  to  avoid  what  is  not  de- 
sired. 

The  sensitive,  active  cell-nucleus  is  the  divine 
lever    for   moving   and   uplifting   the    animate 


PARTNERS  IN  WORLD-MAKING     181 

kingdom.  The  intricacies  and  multiplicity  of 
the  mechanisms,  the  delicate  adjustments  and 
far-reaching  dexterities  of  the  living  organ- 
isms are  amazing.  But  behind  them  all  is  the 
energizing  mentality,  m.ore  or  less  conscious 
and  selective.  The  hunger  of  the  cell  builds 
and  shapes  its  material  organs.  The  craving 
for  continued  Hfe  repairs  the  organic  ma- 
chinery or  precedes  its  anticipated  dissolution 
by  creating  fresh  embryos,  decking  the  plant 
in  floral  attractions  and  the  young  girl  in 
womanly  beauty,  with  prophetic  adaptations, 
such  as  are  only  to  be  ignored  by  the  dullest 
thought.  Were  it  not  for  the  co-working  of  the 
healing  cells  with  the  surgeon,  loyally  rushing 
like  the  watchmen  on  a  levee  to  repair  the  dam- 
age, no  physician  could  successfully  put  a  lancet 
into  the  vital  organism,  nor  could  a  fever  victim 
recover  from  the  assaults  of  the  devouring 
hordes  of  bacteria  within  him.  The  automatic 
processes  of  the  body,  which  relieve  the  con- 
sciousness from  constantly  watching  the  action 
of  lower  bodily  functions,  are  necessities  of  all 
higher  life.  But  the  researches  of  our  ablest 
men  of  science,  such  as  Prof.  Hering,  Cope, 
and  the  younger  Darwin,  now  resolve  these 
wonderfully  adaptive  processes,  as  well  as  most 
animal  instincts,  into  racial  memories  of  the 
species.  They  are  subconscious  operations 
and    inheritances    in    which    the    century-long 


182  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

previous  experiences  of  the  ant,  bee,  moth  or 
other  family  line  is  stored  up.  Although  all 
the  claims  of  the  Neo-Lamarckian  School  have 
not  yet  been  granted,  yet  the  number  of 
eminent  men  of  science,  who  are  giving  their 
adherence  to  it,  is  rapidly  growing  and  the 
leading  naturalists  now  acknowledge  that 
the  "use  and  effort"  by  animals  of  their  vari- 
ous limbs,  organs  and  functions,  and  es- 
pecially the  more  or  less  conscious  experience 
of  the  species  are,  after  all,  most  significant 
factors,  not  to  be  denied  or  overlooked,  in  the 
upward  evolution  of  life. 

From  this  lowest  grade  of  living  creature 
upward,  that  struggle  for  life  and  for  indi- 
vidual pleasure  and  success,  which  Darwin  so 
emphasized,  exists  and  is  influential  in  the  de- 
velopment of  living  species.  But  a  thing  that 
is  far  more  potent  is  that  "struggle  for  the 
life  of  others"  which  Prof.  Drummond  pointed 
out,  and  that  mutual  aid  which  Kropotkin  has 
so  well  expounded.  While  competition  weeds 
out  the  unfit  in  the  prolific  crop,  it  is  the  over- 
flow of  healthy  life  and  the  complex  influences 
connected  with  gregarious  life  and  mutual  co- 
operation that  are  far  more  potent  in  evolving 
new  and  higher  forms  of  vital  species. 

Those  low  kinds  of  living  creatures,  where 
there  is  only  one  cell  or  a  few  cells  and  no  dis- 
tinction of  male  and  female,  and  where  strug- 


PARTNERS  IN  WORLD-MAKING     183 

gle    in    persistent    selfishness    for    each    one's 
separate     advantage    predominates,     continue, 
after  millions  of  years,  on  the  same  low  level 
of   existence.     The   bacteria    and   the   diatoms 
remain  on  the  same  rudimentary  stage  of  life 
as  their  Eozoic  ancestors.     But  as  soon  as  the 
one-celled     organisms     united     themselves     to- 
gether in  many-celled  organisms  it  soon  came 
about  that  higher   forms   of  life   appeared  on 
the  staircase  of  evolution.     And  when  the  male 
creature   differentiated   itself   from   the   female 
and   then   combined   and   co-operated   with   its 
mate,  a  still  greater  variation   and  ascent  in 
vital  potency   was   acquired.     A  bacterium   in 
the   twelfth    generation   has    only   twelve    an- 
cestors,  almost  identical.     But  in   the   twelfth 
generation  of  a  creature  sexually  reproduced, 
there  would  be   over  two   thousand   ancestors, 
bringing  in  an  immense  diversity  of  hereditary 
influences  to  converge  within  the  ofl^spring  and 
to    promote    organic   variation    and    evolution. 
As  the  cells  divide  into  colonies,  their  various 
functions    diff^erentiate    and   each    part    assists 
and   serves   the   other   parts.     Through   these 
group-instincts,  the  higher  plants  and  animals 
lift   themselves    up.     Not   only    plants    of   the 
same    species,    but    also    plants    of    diff^erent 
species  and  even  symbiotic  couples,  in  which  a 
plant   and   an    animal   live   together,   unite   in 
friendly   and  mutually  beneficent  life  partner- 


184  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

ships.  Especially  noticeable  in  this  connection 
are  those  interchanges  of  good  service  between 
the  blossoms  of  the  higher  plants  and  their  in- 
sect visitors,  to  which  has  mainly  been  due  the 
beauty  and  fragrance  of  the  higher  types  in 
the  floral  kingdom.  The  primitive  flowers 
were  very  small  and  their  colors  not  at  all 
conspicuous.  For  the  conveyance  of  the  fer- 
tilizing pollen  to  the  stigma  of  the  ovaries  the 
only  means,  in  the  archaic  epochs,  were  the 
winds  and  waters,  currents  evidently  uncer- 
tain in  their  operation  and  attended  with  im- 
mense waste  of  the  precious  pollen.  When, 
however,  insects  and  humming  birds  began  to 
visit  the  flowers  for  honey  or  pollen,  their 
rough-coated  heads  or  bodies  would  carry  off^ 
more  or  less  of  the  precious  impregnating  dust 
to  the  stigmas  of  the  blossoms  which  next  they 
visited.  Thus  were  produced  eff*ective  cross 
fertilizations,  improved  forms  and  breeds, 
priceless  nectars  and  odors  and  an  infinite 
variety  of  curious  shapes  and  lovely  hues. 
The  brighter  the  petals  became,  the  oftener  the 
bees  or  moths  visited  the  blossoms.  The  more 
steadily  the  insect  go-betweens  transported  the 
pollen,  the  more  that  species  of  flower  multi- 
plied. 

Similarly,  the  great  family  of  birds  have 
been  most  industrious  in  helping  on  the  evolu- 
tion of  life  on  our  globe.     Positively  they  have 


PARTNERS  IN  WORLD-MAKING     185 

been  most  serviceable  in  transporting  pollen 
and  diffusing  seeds,  and  negatively  they  have 
been  indispensable  in  destroying,  or  at  least 
holding  in  check,  the  millions  of  v/orms,  larvse, 
insect  pests,  fungi,  moulds,  bacteria  and  sim- 
ilar foes  that  prey  upon  the  fruits,  vegetables 
and  trees  most  useful  to  men.  The  birds  have 
been  well  called  "Nature's  Militia,"  constantly 
at  work  without  charge,  to  aid  the  farmer  and 
the  nurseryman. 

Those  members  of  our  race  who,  to  gratify 
foolish  and  ephemeral  vanities,  promote  the 
destruction  of  these  most  exquisite  of  Nature's 
masterpieces,  these  best  coadjutors  with  man- 
kind for  the  health,  balance  and  progress  of 
Nature,  display  both  a  short-sighted  selfish- 
ness and  a  base  ingratitude  to  their  dumb  bene- 
factors that  is  a  disgrace  to  humanity. 

At  length,  in  the  upward  climb  of  life,  the 
human  species  appears,  and  at  once  man  be- 
comes a  still  more  influential  factor  in  the 
evolutionary  progress  than  either  plants  or 
animals  are.  Henceforth,  as  has  well  been 
said :  "God  works  not  only  in  man  but  through 
man,  for  man  and  with  man.  Conversely,  man 
works  through  God,  with  God  and  for  God." 

In  the  first  place,  let  us  notice  man's  co- 
working  with  God  in  the  physical  world.  That 
man  would  be  audacious  who  would  assert  that 
God  might  not  have  finished  the  earth  before 


186  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

ever  man  was  created.  But  he  would  be  even 
more  audacious  and  reckless  of  facts  who 
should  assert  that  he  did  finish  it. 

The  immense  modifications  of  the  earth  due 
to  human  agency  are  known  to  every  scholar. 
The  surface  of  our  globe,  as  primeval  man 
found  it, — with  its  tangled  forests,  its  oozy 
swamps,  undredged  streams,  sand-bar-block- 
aded harbors  and  barren  sand-dunes — was  a 
very  different  earth  from  what  it  is  to-day. 
With  axe  and  hoe  and  shovel  man  has  sub- 
dued the  wilderness,  drained  the  morasses, 
opened  highways,  constructed  harbors  out  of 
open  roadsteads  and  made  the  desert  to 
blossom  as  the  rose.  He  has  changed  the 
course  of  rivers ;  he  has  made  the  parched 
ground  a  pool  and  the  thirsty  land  springs  of 
water.  He  has  said  unto  the  mountain  "be 
thou  removed  and  cast  into  the  sea";  and  his 
faith  (when  expressed  in  patent  steam  dredg- 
ers and  dynamite  explosives)  has  not  been  in 
vain.  Manchester,  an  inland  city  thirty 
miles  from  the  ocean,  has  been  turned  into  a 
sea  port.  At  Suez  the  bridge  which  nature 
had  left  between  Asia  and  Africa  has  been  cut 
in  two  and  the  waters  of  the  Mediterranean 
poured  into  the  Red  Sea.  At  Panama  a  truly 
Herculean  feat  of  human  industry  is  about  to 
connect  the  long  separated  oceans  of  the 
Eastern   and  Western   hemispheres.     In   Hoi- 


PARTNERS  IN  WORLD-MAKING     187 

land  the  extensive  territories  which  the  Dutch 
have  added  to  their  country,  by  diking  out  the 
sea  and  draining  the  shallow  lakes  and  fens, 
have  furnished  territorial  additions  which 
comprise  more  than  a  million  of  acres  and 
form  a  tenth  part  of  that  brave  little  king- 
dom. These  are  a  few  among  the  more  not- 
able feats  which  the  human  creator  has  ac- 
complished. 

This  co-operation  of  man  with  God,  in  build- 
ing and  finishing  "The  Great  World's  Farm," 
has  been  most  notable.  But  when  we  turn 
from  the  inanimate  to  the  animate  realm,  when 
we  look  up  from  the  soil  and  scenery  of  the 
earth  to  its  denizens  and  crops,  then  man's 
share  in  the  husbandry  is  still  more  signifi- 
cant. How  many  of  our  fruits  or  flowers 
would  Preadamite  man  be  able  to  recognize  as 
old  friends,  if  he  should  be  summoned  back  to 
earth  to  testify?  Comparatively  few.  The 
pine-apple  in  its  primitive  stage  was  so  acrid 
that  its  juice  bit  the  skin  of  lip  and  tongue. 
The  ancestral  citrons,  from  which  our  sweet 
and  luscious  oranges  came,  were  not  at  all  in- 
viting fruits.  The  savage  forefather  of  the 
plum  was  the  sloe  of  the  wlldwood ;  and  as  for 
the  original  apple,  as  God  made  it,  it  was  al- 
together too  sour  a  crabapple  to  have  tempted 
either  Adam  or  Eve  to  a  second  bite.  How 
strange  to  a  modern  eye  would  Italy  look  with- 


188  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

out  its  myrtles,  olives  and  oranges,  to  say 
nothing  of  its  maize,  tobacco  and  tomatoes. 
Yet  the  first  set  of  these  garden  favorites  was 
unknown  to  the  early  Romans,  and  the  second 
set  was  introduced  only  since  the  discovery 
of  America.  That  general  diffusion  which 
we  see  at  present  of  the  most  useful 
plants  throughout  the  civilized  world  is  al- 
together a  result  of  human  travel  and  com- 
merce. Each  plant  grew  originally  in  some  re- 
stricted district,  from  whence  it  has  been  car- 
ried by  man  across  mountain-chains  and  oceans 
to  the  most  retired  nooks  of  the  earth.  Thus 
the  potato  has  travelled  from  South  America, 
the  buckwheat  from  Siberia  and  the  Amoor, 
the  barley  from  Asia,  and  the  peach-tree  from 
China.  From  Egypt  the  lily  was  brought  to 
beautify  the  gardens  of  Europe ;  and  from 
India,  rice  has  been  diffused  through  all  the 
warm  countries  of  the  globe.  From  Armenia 
the  Romans  conveyed  the  first  cultivated 
cherry-trees  to  Italy,  and  it  was  by  the 
Saracens  that  the  date  palm,  the  orange  and 
lemon-tree,  the  horse  chestnut,  the  tulip  and 
a  host  of  ornamental  plants  were  introduced 
into  Southern  Europe  and  from  thence  spread 
to  the  American  continent.  While  ships  and 
travellers  thus  brought,  in  the  lapse  of 
centuries,  most  of  the  plants,  fruits  and  flow- 
ers of  the  Orient  to  the  lands  at  the  west,  on 


PARTNERS  IN  WORLD-MAKING     189 

the  other  hand  no  sooner  had  Columbus  dis- 
covered the  New  World  than  a  counter  current 
set  in,  and  the  returning  explorers  carried 
back  to  the  old  country  such  now  well-ac- 
climated plants  and  trees  as  the  tobacco,  the 
tomato,  maize,  prickly  pear,  haricot  beans  and 
many  others,  formerly  unknown  in  Europe, 
but  which  are  now  amongst  the  most  familiar 
inhabitants  of  our  gardens.  The  imports  of 
strange  flowers  and  shrubs  from  China  and 
Japan  in  recent  years  have  almost  transformed 
the  appearance  of  our  florists'  windows  and 
greenhouses.  Under  man's  fostering  tillage, 
grafting  and  cross-breeding,  there  have  come 
forth  those  marvels  of  modern  husbandry  at 
which  familiarity  alone  has  made  us  cease  to 
wonder.  In  recent  years  the  hundreds  of 
scientific  agriculturists  who  have  been  working 
at  the  Bureaus  of  Plant  Industry,  the  Agri- 
cultural Colleges  and  Experiment  Stations, 
have  added  thousands  of  millions  to  the  value 
of  the  farm  products  of  our  nation.  They 
have  shown  how,  by  irrigation  to  make  arid 
lands  fertile,  by  chemical  treatment  of  soils 
to  enrich  lands  which  had  become  impover- 
ished, by  proper  rotation  of  crops,  vastly  to 
increase  the  out-put  of  soils,  and  by  scientific 
remedies  to  banish  the  diseases  of  plants,  trees 
and  domestic  animals.  The  trained  explorers 
who  have  recently  searched  the  obscure  corners 


190  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

of  distant  islands  and  continents  have  multi- 
plied a  hundred  fold  the  number  of  useful 
plants  and  beautiful  flowers,  now  common  in 
field  and  garden.  Especially  amazing  has 
been  the  way  in  which  the  expert  plant  breed- 
ers, such  as  Luther  Burbank  and  his  associates 
and  imitators,  by  magical  manipulation  of  the 
vital  forces,  have  transformed  multitudes  of 
commonplace  plants  and  obnoxious  vegetable 
pests  into  serviceable  and  luscious  fruits  and 
lovely  flowers. 

Thus  wonderfully  in  both  the  realm  of  mat- 
ter and  of  vegetable  life  has  man  multiplied 
and  improved  the  original  stock  of  things  with 
which  God  started  evolution  on  its  way.  In 
some  respects,  the  transmutations  that  man 
has  made  have  been  almost  miraculous. 

In  the  higher  realm  of  human  life  our  race 
has  made  almost  equally  remarkable  improve- 
ments. God  has  furnished  man  with  the  raw 
material  of  intellectual  and  spiritual  develop- 
ment. But,  in  his  wisdom,  he  left  the  legacy 
in  man's  hands  to  care  for  and  complete  it. 
God  gave  man  a  noble  endowment  of  possi- 
bilities and  faculties.  The  Creator  set  him 
in  the  midst  of  environing  opportunities  of  the 
fairest  promise.  But  it  was  left  for  man  to 
polish  and  shape  the  crude  materials,  to  ap- 
ply, utilize  and  improve  that  original  inherit- 
ance.    And   the   history   of   civilization   is   the 


PARTNERS  IN  WORLD-MAKING     191 

history  of  man's  progress  in  this  Divine  Co- 
operation. The  earlier  stages  of  man's  evo- 
lution and  the  perfecting  of  his  physical  or- 
ganism were  stages  through  which  he  went  un- 
consciously, under  the  guidance  of  imperative 
instincts.  But  when  he  had  reached  the  up- 
right attitude  and  found  himself  bereft  of  the 
hairy  coats  and  destructive  fangs  and  claws  of 
the  beast  (compelled  as  he  was  to  make  his  way 
in  that  fierce,  early  struggle  for  life  against 
the  stronger  and  better  armed  animals  around 
him)  he  must  make  up  for  his  other  deficiencies 
by  his  nimbler  wit  and  his  keener  brain.  His 
course  of  development  rose  to  a  higher  stage — 
the  intellectual  and  social.  It  became  a  con- 
scious one  and  all  the  powers  of  thought  and 
resolution  and  mutual  fidelity  must  be  sum- 
moned to  carry  it  through  successfully. 

When  we  look  around  the  earth  we  see  an 
astonishing  diversity  of  character  and  range 
of  attainment  in  the  various  races.  What 
caused  the  difference  between  the  Bushman  and 
the  Egyptian ;  between  the  Australian  savage 
and  the  subtle  Hindu?  Was  it  due  simply  to 
more  favorable  soil  or  climate  or  other  in- 
equality in  the  distribution  of  Nature's 
favors?  It  does  not  seem  to  have  been  due 
to  these  things,  but  rather  to  the  respective 
fidelity,  social  helpfulness  and  loyalty  to  truth, 
in  the  different  peoples.     Its   source   is  to  be 


192  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

found  in  the  industry,  ambition  and  courage 
to  break  the  bonds  of  routine  and  mouldy  tra- 
dition, that  distinguished  the  successful  races. 
Human  nature  is  not  that  rigid  iron  bar  that 
traditionalists  have  represented  it  to  be ;  but 
it  is  a  vital  growth,  ever  plastic  to  the  inner 
moulding  power,  however  hard  the  outer  shell 
may  seem.  Even  in  a  matter  where  so  little 
change  is  to  be  expected  as  that  of  size  and 
length  of  life,  statisticians  have  shown  that  man 
has  made  notable  increase  within  historical 
time.  Few  of  the  mediaeval  suits  of  armor  are 
large  enough  for  a  representative  Englishman 
to  get  into  them.  The  average  of  human  life 
has  nearly  doubled  within  two  centuries. 
The  knowledge  and  observance  of  hygienic 
laws  are  rapidly  getting  the  control  of 
deadly  diseases ;  and  the  discoveries  of  chem- 
istry will  probably,  before  long,  enable  us 
to  manufacture  food  directly  from  the  ele- 
ments in  any  quantity  desired.  Thus  all  our 
skillful  scientists  and  physicians  are  co-work- 
ing with  God  to  make  man  more  completely  in 
his  image  than  any  denizen  of  Eden  was.  And 
if  we  must  recognize  these  as  co-laborers  with 
the  Divine,  who  can  overlook  the  contribution, 
to  the  same  high  end,  of  the  social  reformer, 
the  preacher,  the  teacher,  the  statesman,  the 
moralist?  One  might  fill  libraries  with  the 
moving  chronicles  of  the  work  achieved  in  each 


PARTNERS  IN  WORLD-MAKING     193 

of  these  departments.  But  I  have  only  time 
to  touch  upon  one  or  two  salient  illustrations. 
Recall  e.  g.,  what  a  mighty  spiritual  renova- 
tion of  humanity  was  wrought  by  that  great 
uprising  of  the  heart  and  conscience  of  Ger- 
many which  we  call  the  Lutheran  Reformation. 
Or  see  how  the  whole  moral  and  religious  life  of 
eighteen  centuries  has  been  affected  by  that 
pregnant  decision  of  a  young  Hebrew  car- 
penter, that  come  what  might,  odium,  poverty, 
persecution,  crucifixion — he  must  proclaim 
that  larger  law  of  God  fuller  than  all  that 
Moses  spake,  which  he  discerned  in  his  own 
soul.  He  must  deliver  to  his  people  the  eter- 
nal truths  of  love  and  righteousness  that  God 
had  given  to  him  and  he  must  establish  a  king- 
dom of  heaven  on  earth,  wherein  Jew  and  Gen- 
tile might  sit  down  together. 

Think  back  over  the  great  providential 
movements  and  the  famous  national  crises 
of  history,  such  as  the  founding  of  the  He- 
brew nation,  the  defeat  of  the  Persians  at 
Marathon,  the  Discovery  of  America,  the  set- 
tlement of  New  England  by  the  Puritans  or 
the  conversion  of  the  Classic  World  by  the 
Gospel.  Take  whatever  instance  you  please 
among  these  and  will  not  a  moment's  consid- 
eration show  that  in  each  of  them  the  Provi- 
dential step  was  made  in  and  through  the 
strain  of  human  effort  .^^     God  and  man  worked 


194  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

together  and  must  have  worked  together.  If 
Alexander  had  died  in  his  cradle,  if  Paul  had 
disobeyed  the  heavenly  vision  and  gone  on 
persecuting  the  Christians,  if  Luther  had 
been  as  timid  as  Erasmus,  how  different  would 
have  been  the  course  of  history !  If  Wash- 
ington had  been  governed  by  the  same  dis- 
loyal selfishness  that  ruled  Benedict  Arnold,  if 
Miles  Standish  had  been  a  "quitter,"  if  Abra- 
ham Lincoln  had  been  such  a  trimmer  as 
Buchanan  or  Douglas,  the  march  of  Ameri- 
can civilization  would  have  been  far  less  ad- 
vanced and  noble  than  it  is  to-day. 

Let  us  turn  next  to  the  practical  lessons  of 
these  facts.  In  the  first  place,  they  have  an 
important  message  of  explanation  and  en- 
couragement to  us.  God's  world  is  not  yet 
finished.  Let  us  not  judge  it  then,  as  if  to- 
day it  were  the  complete  world,  fulfilling  God's 
plan.  In  John  Stuart  Mill's  "Three  Essays 
on  Religion"  and  in  Prof.  Huxley's  "Evolu- 
tion and  Ethics,"  there  may  be  read  terrible 
indictments  of  the  cruelties,  the  pitiless 
slaughters  and  torturings  to  be  found  in 
Nature ;  indictments  that,  from  the  standpoint 
of  the  old  theology,  according  to  which  God 
completed  his  creation  6,000  years  ago,  seem 
difficult  to  answer.  But  when  we  recollect  that 
the  cosmic  evolution  is  still  progressing  and 
that   God    in    his    wisdom    has    purposely    left 


PARTNERS  IN  WORLD-MAKING     195 

much  for  man  himself  to  do, — this  bitter  in- 
dictment is  seen  to  fall  wide  of  the  mark.  It 
is  as  irrelevant  as  would  be  the  condemnation 
of  the  magnificent  cathedral  at  Cologne  which 
a  traveller,  who  visited  it  fifty  years  ago, 
might  have  uttered.  If,  at  that  time,  he  had 
criticised  as  "inartistic  finalities"  the  incom- 
plete structure  before  him,  the  arrested  tow- 
ers, the  half-finished  traceries,  the  lacking 
transept,  the  heaps  of  rubbish  lying  all  about 
and  the  great  stagings  obscuring  the  walls, 
how  inapplicable  at  that  time  would  have  been 
his  censures,  founded,  as  they  were,  upon  the 
imperfections  then  observed.  How  natural 
and  even  necessary  were  these  apparent  de- 
fects while  the  work  was  still  going  on! 

So  it  is  in  judging  this  far  grander  temple 
of  Nature.  We  are  to  look  not  at  its  scaf- 
foldings and  its  chips.  We  should  think  of  the 
magnificent  design  of  its  Divine  Architect, 
that  grand  consummation  toward  which  all 
things  are  moving,  that  indubitable  sweep  of 
every  line  and  part  toward  something  better 
and  higher,  toward  an  end  too  good  and  too 
noble  for  us  fully  to  understand  as  yet. 

"His  purposes  will  ripen  fast; 
Unfolding  every  hour; 
The  bud  may  have  a  bitter  taste 
But  sweet  wilt  be  the  flower.** 


196  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

In  recognizing  this  share  of  man  in  the 
world's  evolution,  we  thus  find  light  shed  upon 
many  of  our  perplexities. 

And  in  the  next  place  we  find  hope  and  en- 
couragement for  our  endeavors. 

As  we  look  back  on  the  course  of  evolution 
before  it  rose  to  the  level  of  humanity,  it  seems 
in  great  degree  accidental — the  result  of  cer- 
tain fortunate  chances  in  the  struggle  of 
rival  species  and  in  the  lucky  commingling  of 
heredity,    environment    and   variability. 

What  assurance  is  there  (the  scientific 
speculator  is  led  to  ask)  that  the  human  race 
— lucky  as  it  has  been  hitherto — will  be  able 
continuously  to  go  forward?  Why  may  not 
the  evolution  of  humanity  be  arrested,  as  that 
of  the  ants  and  bees  has  been?  Why  may  it 
not  retrogress  to  some  lower  degraded  state, 
as  the  polyps,  sloths  and  barnacles  have? 
Or,  if  men  are  held  fast  in  an  invariable 
frame  of  laws,  of  what  use  is  it  for  them  to 
try  and  alter  it? 

If  we  are  the  result  of  our  environment,  why 
are  we  so  foolish  as  to  spend  strength  in  the 
vain   effort  to  better  that  environment? 

Such  are  the  depressing  questions  and 
paralyzing  influences  that  a  half-comprehen- 
sion of  the  philosophy  of  evolution  suggests. 
But  a  fuller  understanding  illuminates  the  sky 
with  the   roseate   tints   of  good   cheer.     Since 


PARTNERS  IN  WORLD-MAKING     197 

in  man,  development  has  become  a  conscious 
process,  then,  as  Edward  P.  Powell  has  well 
said,  "the  eyes  of  evolution  are  in  its  forehead." 

Progress  depends  no  longer  on  the  chance 
of  a  fortunate  variation,  combining  with 
favorable  circumstances.  The  superintending 
man,  by  purposed  inter-crossings  and  foster- 
ing care,  diversifies  the  pigeon  and  orchid,  al- 
most at  will.  His  own  future  he  has  taken  into 
his  own  hands.  Reason  has  gained  in  him  the 
mastery  over  instinct.  Will  is  able  to  control 
passion.  Intelligence  and  foresight  are  be- 
coming the  common  property  of  mankind. 
Morality  has  been  elevated  and  enlarged.  In 
the  best  men  and  women  justice  is  becoming  a 
second  nature.  Man  is  no  longer  a  mere 
creature  of  the  social  environment.  He  is  a 
living,  active  factor  in  it ;  and  when  it  does 
not  suit  him,  then,  through  steam-engine, 
printing-press,  platfonn  and  ballot-box,  he  re- 
constructs the  environment. 

Whatever  character  or  privilege  we  have  in- 
herited is  neither  our  glory  nor  our  shame. 
The  circumstances  that  have  shaped  our  lives 
in  the  past  we  cannot  alter ;  and  for  them  we 
are  not  responsible.  But  just  as  surely  as  that 
ancestry  and  that  environment  influence  us, 
so  may  we,  by  the  physical  and  spiritual  leg- 
acies which  we  transmit,  by  the  circum- 
stances that  we  mould  and  by  the  quickening 


198  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

or  corrupting  atmosphere  which  we  exhale 
about  us, — so,  I  say,  may  we  shape  the  lives 
of  those  who  are  to  follow  us.  We  cannot 
alter  our  inherited  character.  But  the  noblest 
part  of  every  man's  inheritance  is  the  mind  to 
see  the  two  courses,  the  upward  or  the  down- 
ward, which  lie  before  each  soul,  and  the  will 
to  choose  that  one  of  the  two  which  brings  his 
soul  to  life  and  not  to  moral  death. 

If  our  environment  has  made  us,  now  that 
we  are  here  on  the  electric  car  of  life,  we  sit 
in  the  driver's  seat,  and  we  make  the  environ- 
ment and  we  shift  annually  the  landscape  for 
our  neighbors,  for  our  children  and  for  our  chil- 
dren's children.  Circumstance  may  be  strong, 
but  iNTER-stance,  that  which  stands  within  the 
control  of  the  vital  reaction  and  the  moulding 
power  of  the  resolute  will,  is  stronger  still. 

Still  another  thing  is  plain.  This  is  that 
the  message  of  the  world's  continuing  evolu- 
tion is  not  simply  a  message  of  hope  but  a 
counsel  of  duty.  If  the  world  is  to  become 
what  God  intended  it  to  be,  we  must  be  faith- 
ful workmen  at  the  post  where  he  has  stationed 
us.  If  we  are  not,  his  world  moves  down  to 
ruin,  not  up  to  glory. 

What  a  rich  mine  of  treasure  does  science 
show  our  earth  to  be !  What  a  vast  granary 
stocked  with  all  the  elements  of  well-being — a 
natural  store  so  ample  that  with  judicious  use 


PARTNERS  IN  WORLD-MAKING     199 

man  may  live  on  it  for  countless  centuries. 
But  "the  sons  of  civilization"  have  only  too 
truly  been  characterized  as  the  prodigals,  "the 
Coal-Oil  Johnnies,"  of  their  race,  that  squan- 
der their  inherited  stores  in  boastful  tumult 
and  riotous  living. 

With  hideous  wastefulness  we  devastate  our 
forests  and  exhaust  the  soil,  till  lands,  once 
among  the  most  fertile,  have  become  barren 
wastes.  We  drain  the  earth  of  oil,  gas  and 
coal ;  we  exterminate  the  buffalo,  the  sardine, 
the  mackerel.  We  slaughter  for  decoration 
to  our  headdresses,  man's  best  ally  against  the 
insect  pests,  the  birds,  and  then  we  wonder 
why  the  crops  of  the  farm  and  the  fruits  of 
the  garden  begin  to  fail. 

Is  it  not  time  that  we  should  ask  ourselves 
"what  will  become  of  us  when  we  have  squan- 
dered our  capital  for  good?"  Shall  we  not 
then  be  adding  another  installment  of  magnifi- 
cent wrecks  to  the  sad  catalogue  of  history? 

We  are  the  heirs  of  all  the  ages  past.  We 
are  trustees  for  the  ages  to  come.  For  the 
sake  alike  of  our  ancestry  behind  us  and  all 
their  struggles  and  prayers,  and  for  the  pos- 
terity still  to  come,  whos&  future  (mean  or 
magnificent)  is  in  our  hands,  we  are  under 
bonds  to  fulfill  faithfully  our  part  to-day. 

I  know,  indeed,  that  there  are  plenty  of  men 
who   sneer  at  the  idea  that  we   owe  anything 


200  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

to  our  posterity  and  who  regard  the  conser- 
vation policy  as  to  our  forests,  mines  or  the 
animal  species  so  valuable  for  national  pros- 
perity in  the  coming  ages,  as  a  foolish  senti- 
mentality, "What  has  posterity  done  for 
me?"  is  the  hard  utilitarian  query  of  such  peo- 
ple. "Let  the  coming  ages  take  care  of  them- 
selves, as  we  have  taken  care  of  ourselves." 

This  is  the  short-sighted  attitude  of  the 
small  politician,  considering  only  transitory 
advantage ;  it  is  not  the  broad  and  far-sighted 
view  of  a  statesman.  Even  in  the  utilitarian 
scales,  what  priceless  debts  do  we  owe  to  the 
thought  of  posterity  and  the  self-denials  which 
past  ages  have  made,  not  simply  for  the  imme- 
diate welfare  of  our  generation  but  for  the  wel- 
fare of  the  generations  ahead  of  us.  When 
we  boast  of  the  achievements  of  our  century, 
we  forget  how  small  a  part  of  its  success,  com- 
paratively, it  could  have  accomplished  had  it 
not  stood  on  the  shoulders  of  the  whole  past. 
And  those  past  centuries  worked  not  merely 
for  themselves  or  ourselves,  but  for  the  chil- 
dren and  children's  children  still  to  come.  It 
is  the  grand  idea  of  succeeding  generations 
which,  when  the  present  workers  be  gone, 
shall  enter  into  the  enjoyment  of  the  glorious 
harvest,  which  has  given  us  such  magnificent 
enterprises,  such  enriching  inventions  and 
beneficent  sacrifices,  such  tireless  industry  and 


PARTNERS  IN  WORLD-MAKING     201 

grand  intellectual  triumphs.  Our  present 
civilization  has  been  purchased  for  us  at  an 
incalculable  price  in  self-denials  and  martyr- 
doms by  those  to  whom,  personally  (now  long 
ago  laid  in  their  graves,  as  they  are),  we  can 
never  repay  it.  It  is  only  common  decency  for 
us  to  make  such  acknowledgment  of  our  obli- 
gation as  we  can  by  doing  some  similar  gener- 
ous service  for  the  benefit  of  the  generations 
yet  unborn. 

"God  needs  strong  men  to  help  him,"  well 
said  Luther.  Yes,  and  he  needs  the  help,  too, 
of  the  weakest  and  the  obscurest.  The 
grimiest  hand  that  turns  a  switch  or  sews  a 
harness ;  the  obscurest  mistress  of  the  village 
school  or  the  mother  who,  in  the  rudest  log- 
cabin,  trains  her  little  one  to  honesty  and  love ; 
each  of  them  by  his  or  her  faithfulness  or  un- 
faithfulness makes  or  wrecks  precious  human 
lives.  Each  of  them  unfolds  or  suppresses 
divine  possibilities.  The  indolent  optimist  sits 
still  with  folded  hands  and  says:  Why  push 
and  sweat  for  progress?  The  "spirit  of  the 
times"  will  attend  to  that.  But  what  else  is 
"the  spirit  of  the  times"  but  the  thought  and 
effort  of  the  earnest  minds  who  sacrifice  their 
own  comfort  for  the  common  weal?  Let  them 
stop  their  work  and  "the  spirit  of  the  times" 
will  have  quite  another  complexion. 

One    of    Robert    Browning's    noblest    poems 


202  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

tells  the  simple  life-faith  of  the  old  violin- 
maker,  Stradivarius,  whose  instrumental  master- 
pieces have  become  world-famous.  In  reply  to 
one  who  told  him  that  he  was  foolish  to  be  so 
painstaking  in  the  making  of  his  instruments 
and  that  another  could  make  violins  as  good 
as  he,  Stradivarius  replies : 

May  be.     They  are  diiFerent.     But  were  his  best 
He  could  not  work  for  two.     My  work  is  mine; 
And  heresy  or  not,  if  my  hand  slacked 
I  should  rob  God,  since  He  is  fullest  good, 
Leaving  a  blank  instead  of  violins. 
I  say,  not  God  himself  can  make  man's  best 
Without  best  men  to  help  him.     He  could  not 
Make  Antonio  Stradivari's  violins 
Without  Antonio. 

And  in  making  a  good  pen,  a  good  needle 
or  hammer,  it  is  the  same:  If  we  are  ever 
tempted  to  feel  proud  because  we  are  the  ter- 
minable bud, — the  century  flower  which  crowns 
all  this  patient  toil  and  struggle  of  the  ages 
behind  us,  let  us  ask  ourselves :  "Are  we  living 
so  as  to  show  ourselves  worthy  of  what  we  have 
received.'^"  And  how  can  we  be  worthy,  un- 
less we,  in  our  turn,  convert  this  wealth  of  in- 
herited nutriment  into  its  destined  fruit  and 
by  our  faithful  stewardship  provide  for  the  fu- 
ture, as  the  past  has  provided  for  us.^^ 

But  is  it  not  derogatory  to  God  to  suppose 


PARTNERS  IN  WORLD-MAKING     203 

him  thus  needing  man's  help?  Does  the  praise 
really  belong  to  man  for  all  these  wonderful 
achievements  of  civilization? 

Let  not  man  take  to  himself  any  exclusive 
glory  therein.  His  work  has  ever  been  that 
simply  of  junior  partner.  Neither  soil,  nor 
sun,  nor  root,  nor  smallest  living  cell  has  man 
ever  made  or  could  have  made  alone.  His 
capital  stock — his  material — must  be  furnished 
him  by  the  Maker  of  all ;  and  he  can  but  polish 
it  a  trifle,  and  round  off  the  corners  a  little, 
here  and  there. 

"Nature  is  made  better  by  no  mean 
But   Nature  makes   that  mean:   Even   that   art 
Which,  you  say,  adds  to  Nature,  is  an  art 
That  Nature  makes." 

All  our  human  dissatisfactions  with  nature 
and  strivings  to  improve  it  are  gifts  of  the 
Divine  Creator.  Who  can  doubt  but  that  it 
would  have  been  a  thousand  times  easier  for 
God  to  have  finished  the  world  in  the  begin- 
ning than  to  watch  man's  slow  and  bungling 
efforts  at  completing  it?  This  self-limitation, 
which  nature  shows,  was  for  man's  sake,  not 
for  God's.  It  is  the  very  imperfection  of  the 
world  and  of  our  own  souls,  that  enables  this 
human  life  to  fulfill  its  high  end,  that  of  a 
divine    training    school    for    service,    patience, 


204  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

wit  and  righteousness.  The  supreme  end  of 
evolution,  in  all  its  varied  forces  and  processes, 
is  to  produce  character.  As  Humboldt  has 
said:  "Property,  government,  society,  books, 
religion — all  are  but  scaffolding  to  build  a 
man."  "Fierce  winds  make  the  sturdiest  oaks ; 
and  rough  seas  the  best  sailors."  So  in  the 
moral  world,  it  is  amidst  the  conflict  of  ele- 
ments that  one  learns  firmness  of  will  and 
steadiness  of  soul.  To  disengage  the  pure 
gold,  the  fire  must  purge  out  the  dross.  So 
to  lift  man  from  his  animalism  and  refine  his 
spirit  he  must  pass  through  the  discipline  of 
suffering  and  trial.  Man,  as  a  spiritual  being,- 
is  incomplete  and  ever  must  be  incomplete.  A 
lily,  an  oyster,  or  coral  polyp  might  be  com- 
plete and  finished.  But  such  finite  finish  does 
not  make  a  perfect  world.  Better  than  any 
complete  world  is  the  striving  of  the  ever  in- 
complete towards  the  fleeing  ideal,  the  noble 
life-purpose  of  to-day  ever  creating  a  nobler 
to-morrow.  By  this  voluntary  co-operation 
with  the  Supreme  purpose  and  by  conscious 
obedience  to  it,  that  Divine  Will  becomes 
progressive  within  us.  It  is  no  small  thing 
to  control  the  forces  of  Nature,  But  to  con- 
trol these  eternal  forces  of  the  spirit  and  to 
tune  them  into  harmony  with  the  heavenly 
choirs,  here  is  a  work  far  grander.  We  have 
been    privileged    to    help    beautify    the    earth. 


PARTNERS  IN  WORLD-MAKING     205 

But  a  higher  task,  a  nobler  privilege  has  been 
given  to  man, — to  beautify  and  develop  the  hu- 
man character ;  to  become  a  co-laborer  with  the 
Holy  Spirit  in  the  blossoming  and  ripening  of 
the  soul. 


CHAPTER  X 
SEARCH  THE  DEEP  THINGS 

If  it  were  possible  to  embody  in  a  single 
phase  the  dominant  characteristic  of  our  age, 
what  words  would  perhaps  most  aptly  sum 
it  up?  I  fancy  they  would  be  "The  age  of 
the  superficial." 

We  live  in  externals,  absorbed  in  questions 
of  dress,  display,  wealth  or  etiquette.  The 
gossip  of  the  society  columns  delights  to  tell 
how  much  this  man  is  worth  or  spends  and 
what  that  woman  wears.  What  a  thin  varnish 
is  our  civilization,  covering  up,  under  polite 
cosmetics  and  fashionable  fictions,  semi-barbaric 
crudities  of  passion  and  superstition.  The  suc- 
cessful men  in  the  scientific  world  are  the  hasty 
popularizers  of  unmastered  researches,  dis- 
tinguished chiefly  by  the  confidence  with  which 
they  turn  the  cautious  conjectures  of  the  ex- 
perts into  the  sweeping  assertions  of  fresh 
scientific  dogmatisms. 

So    in    art    and   literature,   what    a   host   of 

dabblers     in    china-painting    and    Kensington 

embroidery  pose   as  representatives  of  artistic 

taste '     How  the   people  who   assume   the  role 

of  culture,  instead  of  reading  the  books  them- 

206 


SEARCH  THE  DEEP  THINGS     207 

selves,  read  about  them  in  the  magazines  in  or- 
der to  be  able  to  talk  volubly  concerning  them 
to  those  who  know  still  less ! 

Our  realism  finds  its  highest  achievement,  in 
painting  in  the  most  elaborate  style  the  out- 
side of  things  and  people — the  robe,  the  man- 
nerism, the  petty  detail;  but  it  prudently 
avoids  the  deeper  task  of  portraying  the  char- 
acter. Our  culture  labors  to  obtain  more 
foreign  words  into  which  to  translate  each  idea, 
not  more  ideas  or  facts  for  each  word.  Our 
politics  substitute  machines  for  principles,  and 
our  generals  give  us  bulletins  for  victories. 
"We  keeps  a  poet"  was  the  ingenuous  admis- 
sion of  Day  and  Martin's  Blacking  Company 
forty  years  ago.  "We  keep  a  reporter" 
would  be  the  truthful  explanation  of  the  rise 
and  growth  of  many  a  modern  celebrity, 
not  only  in  the  dramatic  field  but  equally  so 
in  the  political  and  literary  fields.  The  mod- 
ern press-bureau  makes  fame  as  mechanically 
as  a  furnace  generates  hot  air.  Even  in 
morals  and  religion  there  is  the  same  wretched 
hollowness ; — the  husks  of  rite  and  ceremony, 
and  the  mockeries  of  substitute  salvation  in 
stead  of  personal  reform  and  genuine  spiritual 
life.  Tradition  and  authority  usurp  the  place 
of  moral  insight  and  first  hand  convictions. 
The  forcing  processes  of  revivalism,  in  a  week 
or   two   of  sensational   services,   produce   their 


208  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

crop  of  religious  mushrooms ;  but  not  infre- 
quently we  search  in  vain  for  the  substance  of 
Christian  manhood,  for  any  of  that  deeper  re- 
generation that  reaches  the  soul's  center  and 
thrills  the  throbbing  pulse  to  nobler  life  and 
more  helpful  service. 

In  this  tendency  to  mere  superficial  re- 
sults lies  one  of  the  great  dangers  of  modern 
life. 

In  any  domain  of  existence  to  find  the  reali- 
ties that  alone  nourish  and  sustain  and  abide, 
we  must  go  down  beneath  the  surface  show 
and  costume  to  the  inner  core  of  things. 

To  achieve  strong  and  enduring  success,  to 
elevate  our  art  and  give  solidity  to  our  science, 
to  escape  from  the  selfishness  and  pharisaism 
that  so  honeycomb  our  moral  and  religious 
life  we  must  look  on  the  deep  things.  The 
world's  secret  lies  in  the  life  within  all,  that 
moulds  every  cell,  propels  every  globule  of 
blood  and  directs  the  ideal  architecture  of 
every  embryotic  organism  as  surely  as  that  of 
every  evolving  species  or  full  developed  civi- 
lization. 

In  the  first  place,  in  our  business  and  in- 
dustrial pursuits,  what  else  is  the  greatest  mis- 
chief but  the  prevalence  of  shams?  And  what 
else  is  the  cure  for  these  shams  but  deeper 
work?  When  a  reputable  engineer  starts  to 
build  one  of  these  lofty  thirty  or  forty  story 


SEARCH  THE  DEEP  THINGS     209 

buildings  that  are  now  the  fashion,  what  does 
he  do  as  the  first  and  most  necessary  thing? 
What  else  but  excavate  downward  as  much  far- 
ther than  usual  as  his  sky-scraping  towers  soar 
upward?  If  he  does  not,  he  knows  it  will  not 
be  long  before  those  lofty  walls  will  be  toppling 
over  in  ruins. 

At  the  great  World's  Fair  at  Chicago, 
everybody  admired  the  wonderful  fountains, 
the  splendid  and  complicated  machines  that 
were  exhibiting  themselves  to  the  eye,  and  the 
magnificent  electrical  displays  on  every  hand 
that  shone  forth  so  brilliantly  when  the  even- 
ing spectacles  opened.  They  were,  indeed, 
superb — a  wonderful  fairy-land,  magically 
materialized. 

But  more  marvelous,  to  the  thoughtful  eye, 
was  that  underworld  from  which  all  those 
upper  spectacles  received  their  power — the 
hundred  miles  of  huge  water  pipes,  the  one 
hundred  and  fifty  miles  of  gas-piping,  the 
thirty  miles  of  telephone  cables,  the  two  hun- 
dred and  fifty  miles  of  wire  for  the  electric 
lights,  and  all  the  complicated  subterranean 
appliances  and  arrangements  by  which  the 
comforts  and  displays  above  were  achieved. 

So  he  who  would  rear  aloft  the  towers  of 
great  commercial  or  financial  successes,  he  who 
would  acquire  a  brilliant  professional  or  artis- 
tic prestige  must  secure  it  by  exceptional  under- 


210  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

ground  preparations.  It  is  only  crude  scholar- 
ship, as  it  is  only  a  crude  civilization,  that 
has  little  subterranean  work  going  on.  The 
student  must  dig  and  the  lawyer  delve  and  the 
author  grind  and  polish  his  style  through  ob- 
scure years,  with  unflagging  patience,  before 
the  intellectual  radiance  can  shine  out  that  is 
to  captivate  the  world's  admiration. 

When  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds  was  asked  how 
he  attained  to  such  excellence  in  his  profession, 
he  replied,  "By  observing  one  simple  rule, — to 
make  each  picture  the  best."  Something  of 
this  quality  is  found  in  every  successful  man. 
David  Maydole,  it  is  said,  never  advertised — 
never  pushed  his  business.  But  he  made  the 
very  best  hammer  in  the  market.  Every  time 
he  made  one  it  was  equally  excellent,  and  that 
gave  him  all  the  business  and  wealth  he  wanted. 

When  James  Parton  said  to  him,  ''By  this 
time  you  ought  to  be  able  to  make  a  pretty 
good  hammer,"  Maydole  replied — "No,  I  can- 
not make  a  pretty  good  hammer.  I  make  the 
best  that's  made."  Whether  it  is  manufactur- 
ing, medicine,  painting,  farming  or  financier- 
ing, the  secret  of  permanent  achievement  is 
found  in  thoroughness. 

It  is  these  subtle  elements  of  character  which 
lie  so  much  more  than  skin-deep  that  determine 
not  merely  the  fortunes  of  individuals  but  the 
welfare  of  societies  and  the  destiny  of  nations. 


SEARCH  THE  DEEP  THINGS     211 

"All  the  shows  of  social  life,"  it  has  been 
well  said,  "are  manifestations  of  a  secret  and 
impalpable  substance.  Every  house,  work- 
shop, church,  schoolroom,  theater  is  the  repre- 
sentation of  an  opinion.  What  the  eye  sees 
of  them  is  built  of  bricks,  iron,  wood,  and  mor- 
tar ;  but  the  forces  by  which  they  are  upheld 
are  ideas,  affections,  conceptions  of  utility, 
sentiments  of  w^orship !" 

What  a  difference  it  makes  even  in  the  phys- 
ical development  and  aspect  of  a  country, 
what  sort  of  ideas  or  faith  you  diffuse  there ! 
Suppose  some  magician  could  exchange  bodily 
the  inhabitants  of  two  areas  of  land,  such  as 
Germany  or  New  England  with  an  equivalent 
territory  along  the  Zambesi  in  Africa.  What 
changes,  what  alterations,  even  in  the  physical 
features  of  the  soil,  would  occur.  How  would 
grains  and  fruit  trees  succeed  to  weeds ;  what 
artistic  and  noble  structures  would  take  the 
place  of  shapeless  huts !  Orchestral  music 
soon  supersedes  the  tom-toms.  Electric  lights 
illuminate  forest  glooms,  and  irrigation  works 
fecundate  the  barren  fields  or  drain  and  make 
healthy  the  malarial  swamps.  The  idle  cata- 
racts whirl  the  spindles  of  factories.  Tele- 
phones and  wireless  currents  enable  scattered 
settlers  to  talk  together.  The  fetish  and  the 
witch-resorts  give  place  to  the  church,  and 
comfort,     refinement,     orderly     freedom     and 


212  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

security  supersede  lawlessness,  slavery  and 
poverty. 

When  the  spirit  of  civilization  breathes 
across  a  land,  then,  as  Starr  King  once  said: 
"The  iron  can  no  longer  sleep  in  its  hiding- 
places  ;  the  coal  (the  only  black  slave  whose 
labor  the  white  man  may  rightfully  impress) 
must  bring  its  hot  temperament  to  human 
service;  the  streams  are  compelled  to  pour 
their  strength  upon  busy  wheels  that  weave 
fabrics  of  comfort  and  luxury ;  valleys  are  ex- 
alted and  mountains  bend  their  necks;  steam 
hurries  with  monstrous  burdens ;  magnetism 
shoots  thoughts  along  its  slender  veins ;  and 
mighty  tribes  that  stand  for  justice,  law  and 
equal  government  overlook  a  thousand  cities." 

In  any  such  transformation  as  modern  civi- 
lization brings  about,  the  altered  physical  con- 
ditions are  not  the  cause  but  the  effect.  The 
cause  is  to  be  found  in  the  personal  and  psy- 
chical differences.  It  is  this  battery  of  spirit- 
ual forces  that  makes  the  strength  of  any 
people.  When  two  great  nations  meet  in  the 
grapple  of  war,  it  is  not  merely,  as  is  often 
thought,  the  relative  population  of  the  rivals, 
or  the  comparative  number  of  guns,  forts,  and 
warships  that  settle  which  is  the  superior 
power,  but  the  respective  skill,  valor,  hardi- 
hood and  moral  and  mental  soundness  of  the 
two  that  decide  the  struggle.     Only  when  we 


SEARCH  THE  DEEP  THINGS     213 

can  see  and  compare  the  inward  forces  behind 
the  armor  and  the  muscle,  and  discern  what 
new  power  is  given  to  gun  and  ball  when  brains 
and  discipline  are  behind  to  direct,  are  we  at 
all  in  position  to  forecast  the  issue. 

Our  legislators  are  most  unhesitating  in 
voting  away  millions  to  equip  forts  and  armies, 
build  huge  and  still  huger  Dreadnoughts  for 
a  few  years'  boastful  exhibition  before  they  go 
to  the  scrap-heap.  But  only  miserly  and  re- 
luctant appropriations  can  usually  be  ob- 
tained to  conserve  forests  or  guard  health,  to 
harness  wasteful  water-powers  into  useful  elec- 
tric workers,  or  for  the  still  more  important 
enterprises  of  civilization,  such  as  Bureaus  of 
National  Health,  Pure  Food,  Race  Betterment, 
and  for  the  higher  branches  of  education  and 
scientific  research  on  which  the  progress  of 
civilization  so  directly  depends.  Yet  could 
the  minds  and  dispositions  of  our  law-makers 
be  so  transmuted  that  they  might  cease  to 
waste  the  national  income  so  lavishly  upon 
these  destructive  programs  of  popular  Jingo- 
ism and  instead,  divert  the  resources  and  ef- 
forts of  the  state  into  beneficent  channels  of 
constructive  industries  and  social  enterprises 
(such  as  are  the  real  agents  of  the  comfort, 
wealth  and  culture  of  happier  and  higher  hu- 
manity), what  a  better  future  might  mankind 
enjoy! 


214  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

The  current  plea  against  such  practical 
diversion  of  national  expenditures  into  more 
profitable  channels  is  that  militant  activities  and 
martial  ambitions  are  necessary  means  for  main- 
taining among  a  people  the  spirit  of  manly 
courage  and  are  also  the  only  security  against 
subjection  by  rival  states  or  hostile  races.  The 
plea  is  a  fallacious  one.  The  real  test  in  modern 
war  is  not  that  supplied  by  the  preponderance 
of  military  habits  and  expertness  but  by  the 
scales  of  self-sacrificing  patriotism  and  by  the 
mental  and  moral  forces  that  give  national 
efficiency  and  endurance.  Napoleon,  we  are 
often  reminded,  declared  that  "God  is  on  the 
side  of  the  strongest  battalions."  But  the  his- 
toric records  have  many  an  opposite  testimony 
to  give.  When  Charles  Martel  in  front  of 
Tours,  gathering  together  the  scanty  ranks  of 
his  Frankish  soldiers  in  defense  of  their  Chris- 
tian homes,  routed  the  Saracenic  invaders  who 
would  have  saddled  on  European  life  the  curse 
of  Oriental  polygamy,  the  strongest  battalions 
had  to  yield  to  the  intenser  power  of  patriotic 
devotion  and  superior  manhood.  So  when, 
ten  centuries  later,  our  ragged  Continentals, 
untrained  farmers  and  backwoodsmen,  faced 
the  trained  professional  soldiers  from  Britain 
and  the  Hessian  Duchies,  even  a  more  notable 
historic  example  testified  that  there  were  other 
and  more  Providential  factors  of  victory  than 


SEARCH  THE  DEEP  THINGS     215 

those  supplied  by  the  stronger  battalions  of  the 
military  experts.  That  which  gave  Napoleon 
himself  his  brief  hour  of  triumph  was  just  the 
patriot  devotion  of  French  republicanism,  re- 
belling against  the  outgrown  despotisms  of 
Europe ;  and  when  that  work  was  accomplished 
and  Napoleon  attempted  to  transfer  that  moral 
indignation  to  the  gratification  of  his  own 
selfish  ambition  and  found  a  new  dynasty  of 
imperial  masters,  the  same  irresistible  power 
hurled  him  from  his  throne  into  the  dust. 

Again,  half  a  century  later,  when  the  third 
Napoleon,  after  diverting  the  generous  aspira- 
tions for  liberty  into  a  tool  for  his  personal 
aggrandizement,  had  sapped  the  morals  of  the 
French  nation  by  the  poison  of  his  demoralized 
court  and  his  own  low  example,  the  result  was 
that  the  people  who  had  been  claiming  to  walk 
at  the  very  head  of  civilization,  suffered  the 
most  humiliating  of  defeats.  When  the  warn- 
ing notes  of  "The  Watch  on  the  Rhine"  rang 
out  their  clarion  call  to  the  German  people, 
there  came  forth  to  battle  a  nation  trained  to 
respect  authority  and  do  their  duty  manfully. 
The  French  youth  arrayed  against  them  had 
plenty  of  physical  courage.  But  they  were,  for 
the  most  part,  young  fellows  devoid  of  moral 
stamina  or  religious  principles,  unaccustomed 
to  obey  any  one  or  respect  any  one  and  whose 
physique,  in  too  many  cases,  had  been  sapped 


216  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

by  the  most  weakening  of  social  vices.  In 
such  a  conflict  the  victory  of  the  Germans  was 
fore-ordained.  As  a  remarkable  official  re- 
port, made  soon  after  the  close  of  the  Franco- 
Prussian  War  by  a  keen-sighted  Frenchman, 
has  affirmed:  "Discipline  in  the  army  depends 
on  the  discipline  of  society  and  private  families. 
But  how  can  this  discipline  exist  in  the  French 
army  when  it  does  not  exist  in  French  families? 
Moreover,  look  beyond  the  family  circle,  at  our 
schools  and  our  colleges.  Is  anything  done  to 
develop  among  our  young  people  respect  for 
their  parents,  regard  for  duty,  obedience  to 
authority  and  the  law  and,  above  all,  belief 
in  God?  Nothing  or  next  to  nothing.  And 
yet  there  are  people  who  pretend  that  we  can 
accustom  these  untrained  youths,  devoid  of 
principles,  to  good  discipline  as  soon  as  they 
are  called  into  the  army." 

In  the  light  of  such  testimony  from  men  of 
their  own  nation  there  is  no  doubt  to  what  the 
failure  of  the  French  when  brought  into  col- 
lision with  the  German  soldiers  was  due.  It 
was  a  stern  but  needed  lesson  to  France.  And 
it  is  a  lesson  that  our  own  "Young  America," 
with  whom  liberty — and  I  might  even  say 
license — is  too  often  the  popular  idol,  may  well 
take  to  heart.  Magnetic  as  is  the  attraction 
to  the  average  citizen  of  expanding  our  ter- 
ritorial longitude  on  school  atlases,  there  is  a 


SEARCH  THE  DEEP  THINGS     217 

more  profitable  goal  for  national  ambition.  It 
is  found  in  the  less  noisy  but  far  more  useful 
sphere  of  intensive  development. 

Physical  things  can  be  enlarged  by  external 
aggregation.  But  to  enlarge  living  organisms 
there  must  be  growth  and  union  within.  Every 
coherent  nation  is  such  a  social  organism.  It 
integrates  and  enlarges  by  mutual  services  and 
voluntary  co-operation  into  a  living  whole,  in 
which  each  member  of  the  social  hive  has  an  op- 
portunity for  the  development  of  his  faculties, 
and  an  interest  in  the  product  of  his  own  in- 
dustry. The  strong  and  enduring  government 
is  one  braced  by  the  voluntary  union  of  those 
intersecting  circles  of  the  common  welfare  that 
make  them  hoops  of  steel  to  hold  each  other 
up. 

The  government  of  alien  peoples  by  rulers  in 
whose  choice  they  have  no  part  is  not  merely 
unrepublican  but  a  retrogression  to  the  meth- 
ods of  semi-civilized  times.  That  consent  of 
the  governed  demanded  by  our  Declaration  of 
Independence  is  an  essential  basis  of  healthy 
social  life.  But  as  the  American  citizen  prop- 
erly feels  that  he  has  rights  that  are  not  to  be 
invaded  by  his  neighbor,  and  that  he  who 
thinks  he  has  a  grievance  against  him  should 
be  able  to  establish  his  claim  before  impartial 
judges,  so  each  should  restrain  himself  from 
taking  the  law  into  his  private  hands  and  de- 


218  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

claring  industrial  war  on  the  majority,  when 
through  the   channels   of  properly  constituted 
authorities,  that  majority-rule  orders  measures 
and  customs  that  do  not  suit  him.     If  the  re- 
former, the  progressive,  the  temperance  advo- 
cate, the  suffrage  agitator  or  the  representa- 
tive of  labor  has  a  natural  right  to  resort  to 
violence   to   obtain   what   the   minority   group, 
sympathizing  with  him,  deem  their  fair  share 
of   life's    goods    and   pleasures,   then    also   the 
gambler,    the    anarchist,    the   brewer    and   the 
free-lover  have   similar  justification  in  resort- 
ing to  bricks  and  dynamite  and  revolvers  in  an 
industrial  and  social  war  upon  the  classes  that 
are  arrayed  against  them.     Law  and  order  can 
not  be  varied  to  accommodate  themselves  to  the 
caprices    and   motives   of   individuals.     In   civ- 
ilized society  one  class-section  has  no  right  to 
seek  its  welfare  by  other  means  than  those  le- 
gal  and  peaceable   methods   open  to   all.     Re- 
sort   to    violence    is    a    return    to    barbarism, 
however    good    the    motives    that    prompt    it. 
When    political    passion    or    racial    prejudice 
sweeps    away    in    its    blind    fury    the    sacred 
bulwarks    of    order    and   justice    and   the    citi- 
zens' liberties;   or  when  the   greed  for   easing 
one's  self  of  the  load  of  debt  or  winning  a  polit- 
ical victory  would   break  down   those   invisible 
ties  of  credit  that  pervade  the  mercantile  world 
and,  in  order  to  gain  a  temporary  advantage, 


SEARCH  THE  DEEP  THINGS     219 

would  tarnish  our  financial  honor  and  destroy 
the  confidence  with  which  city  and  coun- 
try, east  and  west,  lean  upon  one  another, 
then,  every  clear-sighted  observer  sees  in 
such  violations  of  principle  the  most  sinister 
of  omens  for  our  national  honor  and  safety. 
Many  reputable  citizens,  to  be  sure,  hug  the  il- 
lusion that  the  lawless  aggression  or  high- 
handed confiscation  that  would  be  abhorred  as 
dishonorable  in  dealings  between  individuals 
are  quite  legitimate  in  a  nation  if  the  deed  will 
be  a  profitable  one  for  the  people.  It  is  for- 
gotten however,  that  while  individuals  may  die 
too  soon  for  "the  mills  of  the  gods"  to  execute 
their  mission  of  moral  retribution,  nations  are 
too  long  lived  to  escape  the  consequences  of 
unrighteous  conduct. 

A  well-known  New  York  lecturer,  awakening 
in  that  imperial  mood  which  the  exhilarating 
atmosphere  of  our  mountains  sometimes  ex- 
cites, opened  his  inmost  heart  to  a  companion 
with  this  exultant  bit  of  confidence:  "I  believe 
that  this  morning  God  himself  is  afraid  of  me." 
When  this  megalocephalic  vertigo  seizes  a  man 
it  is  just  as  well  for  him  to  try  the  sobering 
effect  of  reading  over  several  times  James  Rus- 
sell Lowell's  warning  in  his   Bigelow  Papers: 

"YouVe    got   to    get    up    airlee 
If  you  want  to  take  in  God." 


£20  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

The  Divine  Commandments  prescribing  fair- 
dealing,  mercy  and  pity  to  the  highest  as  to  the 
lowest  of  the  great  human  family  are  not  to 
be  broken  without  eventual  retribution.  But 
if  the  invisible  dynamism  of  normal  manli- 
ness and  righteousness  be  active  and  unde- 
cayed  among  the  common  people,  then  the 
statesman  is  little  disturbed  when  the  hour 
of  peril  comes.  He  feels  sure  that  the  he- 
roes and  patriots,  needed  to  defend  the  na- 
tional existence,  will  rally  promptly  out  of 
every  little  hamlet  to  meet  the  call  of  the  oc- 
casion, as  they  did  at  the  opening  of  our  Civil 
War  in  1861.  The  latent  but  potent  inspira- 
tion, which  in  olden  days  moved  the  sires  and 
grandsires  of  America  to  such  noble  struggles 
and  successful  victories,  will  again  nerve  the 
sons,  and  as  the  hour  for  devoted  sacrifice 
comes  again,  the  uplifting  memories  of  our 
Revolutionary  soldiers  and  the  more  recent 
heroes  of  our  Civil  War  will  resume  their 
sovereignty  over  the  American  people  and  with 
their  sublime  vision  of  the  earth's  grandest 
constitutional  temple  of  impartial  justice  and 
all  inclusive  religious  freedom,  will  rally  the 
true  and  the  brave  to  triumphant  defense  of 
this  Providential  asylum  of  the  oppressed  and 
altar   of  humanity's  hope. 

Yes — it  is  these  invisible  tides  of  the  spirit, 
those  lofty  national  ideals  of  the  past  and  fu- 


SEARCH  THE  DEEP  THINGS     221 

ture  that  constitute  the  best  part  of  America's 
force  and  enthusiasm. 

It  is,  in  fact,  in  these  spiritual  forces  that 
the  sources  of  political  power  or  social  health 
in  every  body  politic  are  to  be  found.  It  is 
evident,  then,  how  puerile  are  those  popular 
remedies  that  would  cure  the  present  evils  of 
society  by  incontinently  suppressing  the  symp- 
toms. Does  intemperance  or  gambling  rage? 
Let  the  legislature,  we  are  advised,  simply  pass 
a  prohibitory  law  and  go  home  to  their  ease. 
Are  the  legislators  corrupt  or  servile  or  blindly 
partisan?  Vote  out,  at  the  next  election,  every 
politician  who  is  in,  and  put  those  now  out  in 
their  places.  Does  money  still  rule,  do  in- 
equality and  poverty  blight  the  land, — then, 
by  drastic  legislation  let  us  have  a  new  eco- 
nomic system ;  take  from  every  landlord  or  rich 
man  his  surplus  profits  and  divide  up 
the  total  national  income  in  nearly  equal 
portions,  and  happiness  shall  reign  in  every 
home— at  least,  one  will  have  no  more  to 
enjoy  or  less  to  suffer  from  than  any  other. 
Such  are  the  easy  panaceas  of  scores  of  theo- 
rists. Their  varied  errors  all  rest  on  one  fun- 
damental mistake — that  the  real  sources  of  sin 
or  crime  or  unhappiness  are  outward  and  ma- 
terial, not  inward  and  spiritual.  They  all  for- 
get that  society  is  but  a  union  of  individuals, 
and  that  no  reorganization  that  does  not  re- 


^22  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

mould  the  personal  character  of  those  individu- 
als can  produce  any  permanent  effect  on  the 
social  aggregate. 

As  we  look  about  on  the  fierce  struggle 
of  business  competition,  class  feuds,  social 
emulations  and  political  ambitions,  it  seems 
almost  as  if  this  nobler  manhood  was  looked 
upon,  not  so  much  as  the  one  thing  needful, 
but  as  the  one  thing  negligible.  It  is  a 
very  easy  way  of  excusing  ourselves  for  all  the 
political  abuses  of  the  hour  by  laying  them  on 
the  shoulders  of  two  or  three  "bosses"  and  busi- 
ness "Captains  of  Finance"  as  if  they  caused 
it  all.  But  it  is  about  as  logical  as  the  reason- 
ing of  the  Irishman  who  smashed  the  ther- 
mometer, proudly  declaring  that  "now  he  had 
killed  the  ''baste'  that  made  the  weather  so 
hot."  What  gives  the  boss  his  power.?  What 
else  but  the  people's  indifference  and  blind 
partisanship  .f^  Are  our  legislators  and  post- 
office  officials  wasteful,  self-seeking,  disregard- 
ful  of  duty  and  public  responsibilities?  Is  it 
not  because  the  millions  behind  them  are  also 
wasteful,  self-seeking  and  disregardful  of  their 
plain  obligations?  We  must  turn  the  scoun- 
drels out  from  more  than  the  public  office — 
we  must  turn  the  scoundrel  out  of  our  own 
coats  and  hearts.  To  rejuvenate  society  we 
need  more  than  a  change  of  circumstance  or  a 
revision  of  the  laws  or  new  boards  of  officials. 


SEARCH  THE  DEEP  THINGS     2S3 

We  need  new  manhood  all  through  the  state. 
We  need  something  more  than  even  a  brand- 
new  economic  system  with  "Socialistic  politi- 
cians" managing  the  great  business  syndicates 
instead  of  the  able  capitalists  now  at  their 
head.  We  need  a  greater  devotion  to  knowl- 
edge and  justice,  more  vital  embodiment  of  the 
Golden  Rule,  not  only  in  business  but  in  all 
the  circles  of  social  activity. 

Unreflective  orators  have  warmly  applauded 
the  surprising  paradox  of  the  professor  who 
has  so  roundly  asserted  that  sin  is  the  result  of 
misery,  misery  the  result  of  poverty,  and  pov- 
erty and  all  its  accompanying  vice,  crime  and 
unhappiness  may  readily  be  remedied  by  an  in- 
crease in  the  income  of  the  unprosperous,  such 
as  may  be  ordained  by  government. 

Deeper  thinkers  in  the  most  diverse  classes 
of  society  find  more  profound  causes  for  our 
industrial  troubles.  For  a  solution  of  the 
social  problem  they  would  find  it  nearer  the 
truth  to  reverse  absolutely  Prof.  Patten's  dic- 
tum and  say  that  vice  and  crime  rarely  fail  to 
produce  misery  and  inefficiency ;  misery  and 
inefficiency  produce  poverty ;  and  the  only 
remedy  for  poverty  that  is  more  than  tempo- 
rary is  better  personality  and  more  efficient, 
clean,  intelligent  and  forceful  character. 

That  veteran  philanthropist,  Mr.  Sidney 
Webb,  whose  natural  sympathies  are  all  with 


224  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

the  submerged  tenth,  nevertheless  has  admitted 
that  it  is  idle  to  regard  the  extremes  of  chronic 
poverty  as  having  any  connection  with  the  con- 
current existence  of  wealth.  The  astonishing 
increase  in  riches  among  certain  classes  in  the 
present  generation  has  not  come  by  subtrac- 
tion from  the  wealth  of  the  rest  of  the  com- 
munity, but  it  is  an  addition  that  has  given  to 
the  laboring  classes  of  to-day  more  abundant 
comforts  and  an  increased  standard  of  living 
such  as  formerly  was  only  enjoyed  by  their 
social  superiors.  For  the  average  man  to  get 
a  larger  income  there  must  be  more  to  divide ; 
and  for  the  nation  to  have  more  to  divide  it 
must  have  healthier  and  more  efficient  work- 
men, more  thrifty  users  of  deserved  earnings, 
more  enterprising  and  skillful  managers  and 
more  able  experts  in  those  scientific  researches 
that  so  transform  society  and  produce  the 
veritable   miracles   of  modern  progress. 

As  Frederick  Harrison  has  so  strongly  and 
wisely  urged :  "The  solution  of  the  social  prob- 
lem is  a  moral,  social  and  religious  question." 
No  mere  rearrangements  of  the  material  condi- 
tions and  economic  and  political  machinery  are 
more  than  temporary  makeshifts.  The  bot- 
tom trouble  is  that  of  the  unlimited  indulgence 
of  self-interest,  uncontrolled  by  the  sense  of 
social  duty.  While  selfishness  is  left  rampant, 
the  most  ideal  laws  will  be  twisted  by  the  cun- 


SEARCH  THE  DEEP  THINGS     225 

ning  and  powerful  to  their  advantage  and  to 
the  thrusting  down  of  the  dull  and  feeble. 
Both  capital  and  labor,  mlllionarles  and  pro- 
letariat must  be  moralized.  The  Golden  Rule 
should  inspire  new  considerateness  and  gener- 
ous reward  in  the  employer  and  new  faithful- 
ness and  effectiveness  in  the  employed.  The 
supremely  desirable  thing  is  to  put  the  human 
interests  of  the  health,  comfort  and  character 
of  our  fellows  above  the  gaining  of  dollars  or 
our  thoughtless  self-gratifications ;  it  is  to  be 
loyal  to  the  genuinely  democratic  spirit  of  true 
Americans  that  honors  a  man  for  himself,  not 
for  his  property,  and  that  arrays  the  citizens 
of  the  United  States,  not  in  jealous  and  hostile 
classes,  horizontally  estranged,  but  in  a  union 
of  good-will,  in  which  high  and  low,  black  and 
white,  foreign  blood  and  native  born,  co-ope- 
rate under  the  inspiration  of  a  living  bond  of 
conscious  obligation  for  the  common  welfare. 

The  supreme  need,  then,  for  our  country  is 
that  of  a  better  humanity,  better  physique, 
more  thorough  knowledge  and  purer  morals. 
The  loss  to  the  national  wealth  every  year 
from  preventable  diseases  is  estimated  at  some 
three  thousand  millions  of  dollars.  It  is  the 
application  of  scientific  researches  by  ingenious 
machines  and  processes,  to  harnessing  Into  the 
service  of  man  the  vast  powers  of  the  natural 
forces,  steam,  water,  gas  and  electricity,  that 


226  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

has  multiplied  tenfold  the  riches  and  power  of 
civilized  communities.  The  additions  to  hu- 
man riches  made  by  an  Arkwright,  a  Bessemer 
and  an  Edison  exceed  all  the  treasures  ex- 
tracted from  the  mines  of  Rhodesia  or  the 
Klondike.  The  contributions  to  human  com- 
fort and  the  saving  of  life  effected  by  a 
Lister,  an  Ehrlich,  a  Marconi  and  an  Alex- 
ander Bell  constitute  a  golden  list  which  in 
value  and  glory  exceeds  all  the  devastations  of 
the  world  conquerors  such  as  Alexander,  Na- 
poleon or  Ghengiz  Khan.  The  prime  and 
direct  method  for  the  improvement  of  civiliza- 
tion, therefore,  is  that  of  profounder  investiga- 
tion into  Nature's  secrets  and  a  more  wide  and 
accurate  diffusion  of  the  information  obtained. 
It  is  well  to  notice  that  I  did  not  say  more 
popularizing  of  knowledge.  That  is  one  of  the 
particularly  irritating  nuisances  of  the  time. 
As  a  keen  humorist  of  our  day  has  said,  "It  is 
better  not  to  know  so  many  things  than  to 
know  so  many  things  that  ain't  so."  Every 
reader  of  the  magazines  and  books  that  flood 
the  market  is  aware  what  a  veritably  morbid 
appetite  there  is  to-day  for  turgid  phrases, 
pretentious  fallacies  and  the  merest  smatter- 
ing of  sociology,  theology,  psychology  and  all 
the  rest  of  the  Greek-named  branches  of  learn- 
ing. Instead  of  trying  to  see  how  many  sec- 
ond-rate  books   you    can    skim    and   then    say 


SEARCH  THE  DEEP  THINGS  2^7 

something  about  them  at  the  next  meeting  of 
your  club,  it  is  far  better  to  see  how  well  you 
can  master  a  few  of  the  great  authors  whose 
noble  books  adorn  our  literature.  To  save 
ourselves  and  our  neighbors  from  the  large  and 
varied  assortment  of  misinformation  floating 
about  on  every  hand,  the  remedy  is  a  diligent 
effort  to  know  the  things  themselves,  not  the 
mere  names  of  things,  whether  popular  or 
technical.  It  is  much  better,  as  Robert  Lowe 
once  said,  to  understand  the  functions  of  the 
liver  than  to  know  that  it  is  called  jecur  in 
Latin  and  something  else  in  Greek. 

Of  the  three  great  branches  of  modern 
knowledge,  viz.,  research  to  obtain  solutions  of 
the  great  hygienic  and  economic  problems,  aca- 
demic discipline  and  equipment  for  our  pro- 
fessional classes,  and  the  industrial  training  of 
our  common  people  for  useful  service,  it  is  the 
second  that  receives  the  greatest  attention. 
But  it  is  the  first  and  the  last  that  are  pre- 
eminently the  most  important  for  the  improve- 
ment, comfort  and  efficiency  of  the  human  race. 

As  a  teacher  of  long  experience,  Ella 
Frances  Lynch,  has  forcibly  said,  "Whether 
w^e  go  into  the  question  of  the  prevailing  mar- 
ital unhappiness,  of  divorce,  of  cruelty  to  chil- 
dren, of  the  saloon,  of  high  prices,  of  the  low 
wages  paid  to  the  ordinary  person  or  of  the 
social  evil,  the  root  of  any  one  of  these  questions 


228  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

can  be  traced  straight  back  to  one  point — in- 
efficiency— the  inefficient  girl  who  does  not 
know  how  to  run  her  home  or  to  care  for  her 
baby,  the  inefficient  boy  who,  knowing  no  trade, 
finds  it  either  hard  or  impossible  to  get  lucra- 
tive work  and  becomes  discouraged."  In- 
efficiency is  to-day  the  chief  curse  of  American 
life ;  and  it  is  because  the  public  school  is  turn- 
ing out  thousands  of  inefficient  workers.  Ac- 
cording to  the  figures  of  the  Commissioner  of 
Education,  out  of  the  nineteen  million  school 
children  in  the  United  States  over  seventeen 
million  never  get  beyond  the  elementary 
schools.  Yet  the  schools  where  there  is  any 
of  that  industrial  training  and  domestic  science 
taught  that  would  fit  these  millions  of  children 
for  practical  life  are,  in  almost  every  town, 
above  the  elementary  grade  and  the  age  of 
fourteen  or  fifteen  years  when  they  go  out  to 
earn  a  living.  The  result  is  that  over  ninety 
out  of  every  hundred  children  receive  from  our 
schools  no  preparation  for  practical  life. 

The  discoveries  made  in  the  last  thirty  years 
by  the  great  scientific  investigators,  such  as 
Koch,  Pasteur,  Galton,  Pearson,  Metschnikoff 
and  their  associates  in  respect  to  just  six  of 
our  prevalent  diseases,  tuberculosis,  pneumonia, 
meningitis,  typhoid  fever,  diphtheria  and  in- 
fantile diseases,  if  generally  diffused  and  if  the 
observance  of  the  new  medical  knowledge  as  to 


SEARCH  THE  DEEP  THINGS     229 

such  common  matters  as  pure  water,  milk  and 
abundant  fresh  air,  could  be  enforced,  are  so 
epoch-making  that  they  would  add,  according 
to  the  medical  experts,  fifteen  years  to  the  av- 
erage length  of  life. 

Wisely  did  the  French  people,  when  asked 
to  name  by  ballot  the  one  Frenchman  who  had 
most  benefited  France,  choose  Louis  Pasteur. 
And  if  the  German  nation  should  ever  try  a 
similar  national  referendum,  they  would,  if 
wise,  put  the  name  of  Baron  Von  Stein,  the 
founder  of  their  splendid  system  of  universal 
and  thorough  education  and  civil  freedom, 
above  even  such  names  as  those  of  a  Bismarck, 
a  Goethe  or  a  Von  Moltke. 

Among  modern  steps  in  progress  none  is 
more  auspicious  and  epoch-making  for  a  higher 
civilization  than  the  fresh  interest  in  eugenics 
that  has  just  been  marked  by  the  assembly  of 
the  First  International  Congress  devoted  to 
that  profound  interest  of  the  human  race.  As 
has  truly  been  said  by  Prof.  Samuel  G.  Smith, 
"There  can  be  no  adequate  treatment  of  social 
therapeutics  without  placing  a  little  child  in 
the  midst,  considering  his  nature  and  his  pos- 
sibilities, the  quality  of  his  inheritance  and 
the  social  responsibility  for  his  education  and 
his  upbringing.  But  in  the  past,  few  things 
have  been  more  neglected  by  our  political  and 
economic  reconstructors  of  society." 


S30  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

The  equipment,  the  adequate  manning  by 
first-class  experts,  and  the  generous  endow- 
ment and  support  of  the  various  bureaus  of  re- 
search, whether  scientific,  medical,  civic,  eco- 
nomical or  statistical,  that  may  give  this  pro- 
founder  knowledge  in  all  departments  of  human 
activity,  is  the  need  of  needs  for  the  advance  of 
civilization. 

Especially  in  the  province  of  religious  faith 
and  practice  has  a  similar  superficiality  of 
thought  been  most  mischievous.  From  what 
else  springs  the  greater  part  of  the  scepticism 
and  the  materialism  that  to-day  beset  the  cause 
of  faith  than  from  just  such  shallowness  of 
understanding  as  to  the  great  subjects  upon 
which  they  so  glibly  pass  judgment? 

For  example,  what  is  the  source  of  the 
agnosticism  that  in  these  recent  days  has  mired 
so  many  an  ambitious  mind,  except  the  intel- 
lectual confusion  that  befogs  it  so  that  it  fails 
to  think  through  to  the  luminous  end  the  train 
of  thought  that  begins  with  such  thoughts  as 
infinity,  divine  absoluteness  and  the  relativity 
of  substance  and  phenomena.  To  give  up  in 
the  face  of  these  ideals,  great  and  subtle  as 
they  are,  in  despair  of  any  practicable  com- 
prehension of  the  relation  of  the  Infinite  Self 
to  our  finite  selves,  is  either  intellectual  sloth 
or  spiritual  cowardice.  Either  we  must  tor- 
pidly suppress  all  our  deeper  feelings  when  we 


SEARCH  THE  DEEP  THINGS    231 

are  brought  close  to  the  presence  of  pain  and 
death,  or  we  must  learn  to  think  deeply  enough 
to  solve  in  some  practical  way  the  insistent 
problems  of  freedom,  responsibility,  God  and 
the  great  hereafter.  Not  only  is  this  pro- 
founder  thought  possible,  but  the  minds  well 
posted  in  the  masterly  arguments  set  forth  by 
the  eminent  philosophic  thinkers  of  modern 
times,  such  as  Martineau,  Caird,  Lotze  and 
John  Fiske,  know  that  it  has  already  been 
achieved ;  and  it  only  needs  due  diligence  in 
these  morbid  bewailers  of  the  incompetency  of 
the  human  reason  to  dominate  the  problems 
most  crucial  to  modern  faith.  Those  who  have 
conquered  them  are  well  aware  that  the  chief 
incompetence  is  to  be  found  in  the  unreflect- 
ing individual's  own  bewilderment  of  thought. 
It  does  not  lie  in  the  inefficient  mental  equip- 
ment provided  by  the  Maker  of  all  for  the 
human  reason  in  the  battle  of  life. 

So,  also,  that  recent  charge  against  our 
universe  and  the  Divine  Government  which  cer- 
tain men  of  scientific  reputation  have  indulged 
in,  as  they  have  made  amateurish  exploring 
trips  into  the  field  of  religious  philosophy, 
viz :  that  Nature  is  an  irrational  and  unmoral 
realm  and  the  only  Force  in  it  that  we  can 
call  Supreme  and  Creative  is  a  blind  and  im- 
personal one — what  else  does  this  disclose  than 
a  superficiality  of  reflection?     For  it  evidently 


232  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

forgets  that  which  in  the  very  next  page  it 
usually  boasts  over — the  law  of  evolution  as  a 
steadily  ascending  progress,  as  a  series  in 
which  man  is  shown  to  be  organically  con- 
nected with  the  domain  of  Nature,  animal  life 
and  the  material  environment  below  and  about 
man — a  series  that  rises  out  of  Nature  as  its 
completed  product  and  purposed  end.  But  if 
man  be  thus  the  destined  crown  of  the  develop- 
mental order,  that  very  fact  supplies  the 
triumphant  answer  to  these  cynical  criticisms. 
For  in  man,  an  inseparable  part  of  Nature  and 
its  very  acme,  there  emerge  the  very  attributes 
of  rationality,  personality,  ethical  and  spiritual 
attributes  denied  to  the  cosmos  and  its  in- 
forming, constructive  Life.  But  it  is  plain 
that  nature  could  not  give  to  man  these  traits 
and  faculties  unless  nature  previously  pos- 
sessed them  in  her  secret  depths,  with  power  to 
give.  The  evolution  of  spirit  in  man  implies 
the  original  involution  and  residence  of  Spirit 
within  Nature.  Nature  is,  therefore,  not  to  be 
regarded  as  a  dead,  unmoral  mass,  but  as  the 
vital  organism  of  an  Omnipresent  Spirit.  The 
infinitely  outstretched  cosmos  is  but  the  out- 
ward body  of  an  invisible  and  equally  infinite 
and  eternal  Life,  whose  deep  mysterious  at- 
tributes cannot  be  lacking  in  the  refulgent  per- 
fections that  have  burgeoned  and  bloomed  so 
wonderfully  from  their  deep  and  fertile  roots. 


SEARCH  THE  DEEP  THINGS     233 

Or  take  up  any  of  the  other  points,  such 
as  the  benevolence  of  the  Father  of  Spirits,  the 
question  of  miracles,  the  problem  of  evil,  the 
possibility  and  method  of  a  survival  of  the 
soul — almost  any,  in  fact,  of  the  burning  issues 
in  natural  theology — and  it  will  in  most  cases 
be  found  that  the  chief  thing  for  their  hopeful 
settlement  is  this  deeper  and  more  thorough 
inquiry.  In  order  to  vindicate  to-day  the 
great  realities  of  religious  faith  we  should  re- 
member what  Lord  Bacon  so  well  said  of  thq 
doubters  of  the  17th  century:  "A  little  phi- 
losophy inclineth  man's  mind  to  atheism,  but 
profounder  philosophy  bringeth  man's  mind 
back  to  religion." 

As  modern  science  finds  that  life  originated, 
not  on  the  surface  of  the  earth,  but  in  the  sea- 
water,  whose  chemical  composition  is  so  close 
to  that  of  the  human  organism,  so  may  a  rea- 
sonable faith  be  born  again  "de  profundis," 
and  emerge  triumphant  like  Aphrodite  from 
the  ^gean  waves. 

Our  preachers  and  theological  writers 
should  delve  in  the  depths.  The  pulpit  that 
would  command  respect  in  this  age  of  free  in- 
quiry cannot  ignore  the  grave  problems  that 
assail  thoughtful  minds,  albeit  such  discussions 
do  not  entertain  the  children  or  the  devotees 
of  fashion.  The  remedy  for  popular  doubt  is 
not  in  fervid  oratory  or  revival  tricks  that  may 


234  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

titillate  and  dizzy  the  emotions,  but  in  the  shak- 
ing off  of  that  mental  indolence  that  now  shirks 
serious  reflection  as  a  bore.  Let  him  who  longs 
for  light,  gird  up  the  loins  of  his  mind,  de- 
termined to  think  problems  through  to  the 
end ;  and  his  search  shall  not  fail  to  find  a 
bridal  dawn  of  truth  and  hope  bright  enough 
to  enable  him  to  acquit  himself  as  a  loyal  son 
of  God. 

In  profounder  thought  and  truth,  then,  lies 
the  prime  guide  to  scientific,  social,  personal 
and  religious  progress.  And  the  second  great 
source  and  impulsive  agency  is  that  of  pro- 
founder  feeling.  While  the  heart  is  cold  the 
words  of  the  Golden  Rule  sound  on  the  ear  as 
but  the  patter  of  meaningless  syllables,  and 
social  regeneration  and  vital  religion  are  hope- 
less quests. 

But  realize  your  neighbor,  let  him  stand  be- 
fore you  as  one  who  has  the  same  needs  and 
desires  and  sensitive  feelings  as  yourself,  as 
one  to  whom  hunger  and  cold  bring  the  same 
pain  as  to  yourself;  then  those  words,  "Do 
unto  others  as  ye  would  that  men  should  do 
unto  you,"  take  on  a  fresh  meaning  and  au- 
thority. Let  love  to  one's  dear  ones  awaken 
the  desire  and  the  subtle  enjoyment  in  mutual 
service  and  let  it  grow  outwardly  in  the  com- 
munity in  which  you  live  until  the  recognition 
that   the   most   down-trodden   member   of   that 


SEARCH  THE  DEEP  THINGS     235 

community  is  formed  of  the  same  aching  flesh 
and  nerves  as  yourselves ;  then  a  vibration  of 
compassionate  helpfulness  and  social  affection 
will  begin  to  move  within  with  such  urgency  as 
to  make  the  Heavenly  Father's  love  and  care  of 
his  human  children  and  their  gratitude  and 
loyalty  to  him  become  genuine  spiritual  neces- 
sities of  normal  humanity.  And  in  the  next 
place,  if  our  awakened  sympathy  can  stir  still 
deeper,  so  that  at  length  the  sealed  fountains 
of  the  heart  open  and  we  discern  even  dimly 
the  common  divine  image  in  all  men,  however 
submerged  and  distorted,  and  become  aware  of 
the  infinite  consequences  of  our  earthly  rela- 
tions, then  in  what  a  blessed  way  will  the  hard- 
ness, cruelty  and  self-seeking  begin  to  melt 
away.  When  this  respect  for  the  worth  of 
man  as  a  brother  and  this  tenderness  for  the 
pangs  of  our  fellows  come  to  conscious  realiza- 
tion, no  such  unnecessary  wastes  and  sufferings 
as  modern  war  now  involves,  with  its  two  thou- 
sand million  financial  cost  and  its  monstrous 
human  wreckage,  can  be  thought  of  without 
repulsion. 

They  who  have  once  experienced  this  trans- 
muting stir  of  the  latent  humaneness  in  our 
race  recognize  it  with  George  Eliot  as  amongst 
the  greatest  privileges  of  life.  They  welcome 
even  "the  sad  experiences  that  may  have 
brought  it  to  them  as  worth  all  their  personal 


236  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

share  of  pain  and  would  no  more  return  to  the 
old  torpor  and  narrowness  than  the  patient 
who  has  had  a  cataract  removed  would  return 
to  the  dim  shadows  of  his  purblind  days." 

One  of  our  poets  has  said  of  that  pure  and 
exalted  soul,  Victoria  Colonna,  "She  learned  in 
suffering  what  she  taught  in  song."  This  has^ 
indeed,  been  the  school  in  which  all  the  most 
moving  poetry  of  our  literature  has  been 
learned.  As  we  watch  some  active  helper  of 
her  kind,  going  on  her  cheery  and  cheering 
way  with  helpful  hand  and  encouraging  voice, 
we  are  apt  to  fancy  that  it  is  because  her  own 
lot  is  so  bright  that  she  bears  thus  easily  the 
burden  of  others.  But  if  we  are  fortunate 
enough  to  know  her  intimate  experiences,  we 
often  find  that  it  was  not  because  she  has  been 
exempt  from  trial,  but  rather  just  because  of 
her  own  heart-aches  and  her  consciousness  of 
the  universality  of  sorrow  and  weakness  in  the 
world,  that  she  has  gained  this  delicate  art  of 
tender  consolation. 

He  who  would  obtain  the  victories  of  the 
spiritual  life  should,  then,  seek  the  strength 
of  the  hidden  things,  the  irresistible  momentum 
of  the  eternal  principles  whose  potent  indwell- 
ing makes  common  clay  a  soul. 

In  regard  to  many  and  many  a  man  whom 
we  meet  in  business  or  social  intercourse  we 
somehow  feel  that,  successful  and  important  as 


SEARCH  THE  DEEP  THINGS     237 

he  seems  to  be  in  the  scales  of  the  world's  opin- 
ion, yet  he  is  only  what  Aristotle  defined  man 
to  be,  "a  political  animal."  He  is  neither  a 
social  soul  nor  a  spiritual  being.  He  has 
hardly  caught  a  glimpse  of  the  inner  heart  of 
being,  pulsing  beneath  the  veil  of  visible  things. 
Such  a  man  will  never  see  but  half  the  glory 
in  which  the  world  is  bathed.  He  will  never 
make  a  poet  nor  a  composer  nor  in  any 
humbler,  but  equally  effective  fashion,  will  he 
move  the  great  world  forward  an  inch  out  of 
the  dust  of  the  actual  toward  the  kingdom  of 
the  ideal.  He  who  would  accomplish  some- 
thing on  that  higher  plane  must  let  character 
weigh  more  with  him  than  steel  or  gold,  and  he 
must  discern  that  the  true  essence  of  man  lies 
in  that  which  allies  him  with  his  Maker,  and 
he  should  see  how  much  more  constructive 
power  and  upward  guidance  in  the  destiny  of 
nations  lie  in  the  truths  expressed  in  a  single 
verse  of  the  Beatitudes  than  in  all  the  cannon 
and  mines  of  Cherbourg,  Woolwich  or  Fortress 
Monroe.  It  is  a  fact,  which  the  candid  study 
of  history  will  abundantly  prove,  that  the  origin 
and  steady  propulsion  of  the  great  historic 
movements  lie  hidden  in  potencies  of  a  more 
subtle  type  than  the  masses  suspect.  They 
are  to  be  found  in  the  intellectual  and 
moral  vision  of  a  few  great  leaders  who  discern 
by    a    lofty    and   inexplicable   instinct   certain 


238  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

eternal  principles  of  right  and  truth  and 
magnetic  good-will.  And  as  they  coura- 
geously adopt  them,  the  infinite  energies  of  the 
cosmic  Dynamo  become  connected  with  them 
and  reinforce  the  finite  powers  of  the  man  with 
the  invincible  co-operation  of  the  Divine.  To 
the  world  of  conventional  time-servers  and 
trimmers,  such  seers  and  prophets  seem  rank 
visionaries  and  their  proposed  steps  of  prog- 
ress mere  chimeras.  But  in  reality  they  are 
the  sanest  of  men.  They  are  wielding  great 
and  real  forces,  though  to  ordinary  men  they 
are  as  hidden  and  magical  as  the  invisible 
currents  of  a  wireless  station,  speeding  on  the 
undulations  of  the  ether  over  miles  of  track- 
less seas,  are  to  semi-civilized  tribes.  While 
inert  traditionalists  look  with  hopeless  awe  at 
the  massive  and  lofty  walls  of  ecclesiastical  or 
institutional  Jerichos,  whose  frowning  battle- 
ments seem  to  mock  every  assault  of  the 
soldiers  of  reason  and  righteousness,  the  sap- 
pers and  miners  of  advancing  public  opinion, 
guided  by  the  light  of  spiritual  insight,  per- 
severe steadily  in  pushing  in  their  charges  of 
moral  lyddite  and  intellectual  dissolvents,  until 
at  length,  on  some  auspicious  day,  the  irre- 
sistible chemistry  of  higher  public  opinion,  re- 
leased in  full  force  by  the  electric  discharge  of 
some  unusual  wrong  or  contagious  compas- 
sion, lays  low  the  frowning  citadels  and  trans- 


SEARCH  THE  DEEP  THINGS     239 

figures  the  ruins  of  the  dead  past  with  the 
circling  bow  of  promise  and  the  sunshine  of  the 
happier  future. 

The   eternal   force  inherent  in  every  tiniest 
electron  of  the  whirling  molecules  is  one  that  is 
ever  repairing  the  organic  decay,  transmuting 
ooze    and    excrement    into    fragrant   rose    and 
luscious     orange     and     dimpling     babe.     The 
energizing  and  subtle  fluid  that  pulses  through 
the  veins  of  our  unwithering  world  is  a  vital 
blood  and  therefore  ever  presses  toward  growth 
and  enlargement,  toward  ampler  efficiency,  to- 
ward the  reasonable,  the  more  precious  worth. 
It    is    the    same    animating   Divine   Life   that 
circles   in   such   orderly   progress   in   the   con- 
densing  nebulae   and   in   the   budding   blossom 
and  at  length  in  the  soul  of  man  reaches  up- 
ward in  earth-spurning  aspirations.     So  it  is 
the   same  eternal   forces   of  growth  that  have 
ripened  the  foremost  spirals  to  happy  worlds 
that  also  ferment  in  the  heart  of  man  and  in 
the  veins  of  every  community  that  has  not  be- 
gun to  degenerate.     The  salvation  and  glory 
of  man   is   to    ally   himself   with   this    Eternal 
Reality  that  ever  works  for  righteousness,  il- 
lumination,   and   widening  love    and   harmony. 
It  is  by  this  august  alliance  with  the  Soul  of 
our  souls  that  the  loyal  individual's  strength 
and  influence  are  multiplied  tenfold.     He  who 
would    have    the    incomparable    force    of    the 


240  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

cosmos  flowing  through  and  Invigorating  him 
must  cultivate  that  faith  that  the  Philistine  de- 
spises. This  fortifying  faith  is  no  magical 
password  or  blind  and  flimsy  credulity,  leaning 
on  the  traditional  assumptions  of  institutional 
ignorance;  it  is  the  rational  faith  that  trusts 
the  constant  order  of  the  universe  and  charges 
its  motor  car  with  the  invisible  forces  of  God's 
moral  and  spiritual  realm.  Though  it  may 
have  little  sense  basis  in  verifications  by  finger 
and  eye,  it  has  back  of  it  the  record  of  Na- 
ture's past,  and  the  imperative  assurances  of 
our  rational  intuitions  and  our  righteous  in- 
stincts. 

When  Robert  Ingersoll  derisively  expressed 
the  wish  that  Providence  had  made  health  as 
infectious  as  disease,  he  overlooked  the  fact 
that  the  Maker  had  made  it  more  infectious, 
though  by  the  subtler,  circuitous  channels  of 
knowledge  and  compassion.  Those  righteous 
laws  are  invincible;  for 

"In    every    nation 
Every  human  heart  is  human." 

In  all  normal  communities  the  appeals  of  pity, 
truth  and  conscience  will  receive  deserved  re- 
sponse. The  divine  serums  are  always  regen- 
erative. The  blood  that  in  every  century  and 
every  nation  renews  the  sympathetic  Brother- 
hood   of    Man    is    a    liquid    thicker    and   more 


SEARCH  THE  DEEP  THINGS     241 

quickening  than  water.  Let  us  confide  with- 
out hesitation  in  the  splendid  radiation  of 
every  patriotic  earnestness,  in  the  eternal  in- 
fluences  of  every  righteous  effort   and  in 

"The  sweet  presence  of  a  good  diffused 
And   in   diffusion   ever   more   intense." 

The  counsel  of  the  ages  to  the  perplexed  and 
discouraged  soul  is  this :  "Root  your  life  deeper 
each  day  in  the  eternal  things  of  God.  Even 
though  the  ways  of  Providence  lead  into 
fathomless  waters  of  care  and  bereavement,  let 
us  walk  forward  into  the  depths  with  unswerv- 
ing trust.  How  often  in  life  is  it  the  very  loss 
of  prestige  or  friends  or  worldly  goods  that 
gives  a  man  back  possession  of  himself  .f' 

Let  us  not  murmur  at  the  guiding  Hand 
which  brings  us  into  difficulties  as  if  it  aimed 
thereby  to  mire  us  in  them  permanently. 
Rather  let  us  confide  that  through  whatever 
"covered  way"  we  have  to  grope,  it  is  a 
way  that  will  bring  us  through  the  gloomy 
tunnel  to  a  larger  outlook,  where  with  clearer 
vision  we  may  see  the  heaven-kissing  heights, 
before  hid  by  the  nearer  and  lower  hillocks. 
Onward  and  upward  let  the  loyal  child  of  God, 
a  stalwart  soldier  and  pioneer,  push  on,  to  catch 
through  the  mists  and  shadows,  at  each  mile- 
stone of  life,  new  glimpses  of  the  beneficent 
sweep   of   the   grand   purposes   of   the   Divine 


242  THE  OPEN  SECRET 

Goodness,  new  assurances  of  the  majestic  bend 
of  that  sky-bright  dome  of  purer  blessedness 
and  fuller  real  life,  which  God  steadfastly 
arches  over  the  head  of  the  poorest  son  of  God 
who  looks  upward  with  human  eyes. 

What  still  unfathomed  wisdom  lurks  in  the 
lines  of  Ralph  Waldo  Emerson ! 

*'Profounder,  profounder^  man's  spirit  must  dive. 

His  aye-rolling  orbit  at  no  goal  will  arrive. 

The  heavens   that  now  draw  him  with  sweetness 

untold, 
Once  found,  for  new  heavens  he  spurneth  the  old." 


n.«STTY  or  CALirORNIA  LIBRARY 
UNIVERSITY  Ol^^j^j^^y 

..aeskfromwbichborrowed. 


»*,v 


JAN  1  4'6^  -y  FiM 


LD  21-lOOm- 


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'^iJl^^^t-.VK 


YB  23020 


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'  271810 


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UNIVKRSITY  OF  CAWFORNIA  lylBRARY 


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